ABSTRACT
Since the mid-1990s, garment and shoe factories have multiplied in the outskirts of Phnom Penh and provided work to hundreds of thousands of people, most of them women. Though this phenomenon happened later than in other neighboring countries, Cambodian women have become part of the so-called “new” international division of labor by taking their place along an imagined “global assembly line.” While such abstractions are often used to analyze structural consequences of global industry, they do not provide an understanding of how new work and urban experiences influence the lives of Cambodian women working in these “global factories.” Caught in ambiguous and contradictory representations, Cambodian factory workers are considered at once to be dutiful daughters and loose women; a docile and industrious workforce as well as obstinate, lazy workers; a driving force behind national economic development and a threat to Khmer values and traditions. How do young women themselves make sense of these conflicting positions when they leave their villages to work in Phnom Penh? And what do they tell us about the changing nature of Cambodian society today? In this chapter, by focusing on rural women who have moved to Phnom Penh to work in the garment industry, I attempt to answer these questions and look at how they deal with various contradictory expectations and aspirations. In so doing, I pay particular attention to the story of one factory worker named Srey, to illustrate how these expectations and aspirations are reworked through urban employment, rural networks, and participation in “modern” consumption and activities. The dilemmas and contradictions that make up her story speak to the challenges that shape not only the lives of young Cambodian women, but also the whole of Cambodian society.1
