Precarious Work and the Challenge for Asia Kalleberg, Arne L.; Hewison, Kevin
The American behavioral scientist (Beverly Hills),
03/2013, Letnik:
57, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This article discusses the social, economic, and political factors that led to the rise and consolidation of precarious work in various countries in Asia. We first define what we mean by “precarious ...work” and its utility for describing the growth of work that is uncertain and insecure and in which risks are shifted from employers to workers. We then provide an overview of the factors that generated precarious work in industrial nations, notably the spread of neoliberalism as a political and economic perspective, the expansion of global competition, and technological development. These macro structural influences created an impetus for greater flexibility among both states and employers, which in turn led to more precarious work in both formal and informal sectors of the economies of many Asian countries. This, in turn, has provoked various types of resistance on the part of workers against the negative consequences of precarious work.
Precarious Asia Kalleberg, Arne L; Hewison, Kevin; Shin, Kwang-Yeong
12/2021
eBook
Precarious Asia assesses the role of global and
domestic factors in shaping precarious work and its outcomes in
Japan, South Korea, and Indonesia as they represent a range of
Asian political ...democracies and capitalist economies: Japan and
South Korea are now developed and mature economies, while Indonesia
remains a lower-middle income country.
With their established backgrounds in Asian studies, comparative
political economy, social stratification and inequality, and the
sociology of work, the authors yield compelling insights into the
extent and consequences of precarious work, examining the dynamics
underlying its rise. By linking macrostructural policies to both
the mesostructure of labor relations and the microstructure of
outcomes experienced by individual workers, they reveal the
interplay of forces that generate precarious work, and in doing so,
synthesize historical and institutional analyses with the political
economy of capitalism and class relations. This book reveals how
precarious work ultimately contributes to increasingly high levels
of inequality and condemns segments of the population to chronic
poverty and many more to livelihood and income vulnerability.
Focusing on the issues associated with migrating for work both in and from the Asian region, this book sheds light on the debate over migration and trafficking. With contributions from an ...international team of well-known scholars, the book sets labour migration firmly within the context of globalization, providing a focused, contemporary discussion of what is undoubtedly a major twenty-first century concern. Transnational Migration and Work in Asia analyzes workers motivations and rationalities, highlighting the similarities of migration experiences throughout Asia. Presenting in-depth case studies of the real-life experiences and problems faced by migrant workers, the book discusses migrants’ relations with the state and their vulnerability to exploitation, as well as the major policy issues now facing governments, employers, NGOs and international agencies.
This article provides an account of the upper echelons of Thailand's capitalist class. Based on an analysis of the Forbes data on Thailand's wealthiest for the period 2006-2019, it analyses the 30 ...families and groups that have dominated these rankings over this period. The article compares how the growth of this group's wealth has outpaced other measures of how Thailand's economy has grown over this period. The article also compares this Forbes-ranked group with the upper reaches of the Thai capitalist class in 1980, assessing wealth and investment between the most important capitalist groups in 1980 and those in the Forbes rankings for 2006-2019. It finds considerable consistency within this category, in both periods and over time.
The 1997 economic crisis in Thailand provided an opportunity for a reinvigoration of neo-liberal economic policies. International financial institutions, together with Thailand's Democrat-led ...government, emphasised further market reforms, liberalisation, deregulation, decentralisation, privatisation and a reduced role for the state. The deep economic downturn saw a popular rejection of such policies, meaning that the neo-liberal interregnum was short-lived. The 2001 landslide electoral victory of the Thai Rak Thai Party symbolised the intensity of opposition to neo-liberalism. It also showed that national governments remain critical in shaping markets and that domestic economic actors continue to have significant political roles. In Thailand, far from neutering domestic capital's political capacity, the crisis and opposition to neo-liberalism saw this enhanced. One reason for this was that neo-liberal restructuring was not simply about the efficient operation of the market. Rather, it demanded a fundamental transformation of the operations of government and of the ways that business was organised and conducted. This threatened domestic capital. Its economic survival required that it seize the state so that it could control economic policy-making. This was achieved through the Thai Rak Thai electoral victory and its subsequent rule, where the protection of domestic capital's interests was achieved through a re-negotiation of its social contract with other classes.
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