ABSTRACT
As noted in the introduction to this volume, global commodity chain analysis has a tendency to ignore what is actually happening on the ground in countries where clothing is assembled. There are excellent analyses of globalization and the clothing industry (Bonocich and Applebaum 2003; Bruce and Daly 2004; Hale and Willis 2005; Bair 2005; Chan 2011), and of the global commodity chains that clothing production generates (Gereffi 1994; Gereffi and Memedovic 2003). However, the latter has focused on evaluating industrial upgrading and assumes that the workers’ situation will improve during the process. In recent times, less attention has been directed to the labour conditions of workers, especially of the growing army of temporary migrant workers recruited to work in export-oriented factories across Asia.1 These workers do not enjoy the rights of citizens and often encounter new forms of contract-based engagement in which recruitment firms mediate the relationship between workers and factory managers (see Barrientos 2013). In this new context, it is very difficult for traditional union-based labour activism to flourish (Knutsen et al. 2013). However, new forms of resistance are emerging via migrant networks, NGOs, churches and self-help groups. The experiences of migrant workers in Malaysia shed new light on these emerging organizational forms and their multi-scalar links. The research that informs this chapter was conducted between 2008 and 2010 in Johor and Batu Pahat and then in Penang, Kuala Lumpur and Batu Pahat between 2009 and 2013.2 In these industrial towns immigrant workers live close to factories in hostel-type accommodation. Group interviews were organized within the various hostels and at other sites in Malaysia. From these groups, a convenience sample of 13 female and three male Vietnamese workers and seven male and one female Nepalese workers who worked in clothing factories in Malaysia were interviewed in order to compare and contrast their experiences. We selected workers on the basis of their availability and willingness to participate in the interviews. Vietnamese was the primary ethnicity selected because one of the authors is Vietnamese American and speaks fluent Vietnamese. The Nepalese men work alongside the Vietnamese women in the clothing production lines. Indonesians, Chinese and Cambodians also commonly work in the Malaysian clothing factories. Some of the workers we interviewed participated in Christian fellowships. As well as participant observation in hostels and church
agencies, interviews with clothing textile trade unionists, NGOs and church advocates were conducted to complement workers’ accounts. The chapter is structured as follows. The first section provides an outline of Malaysia’s state-managed migration policies and the resulting exploitative circuits of labour migration. The second section briefly outlines the history of labour migration in Malaysia to show the connections between migration, the state, NGOs and civil society. Its historical account of labour migration traces the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion that have been created by the state and capital and shows how these processes are gendered and racialized. The third section examines the roles of NGOs and Christian associations in supporting migrant workers. It explains how the NGO movement has been instrumental in making the government accountable for its ad hoc migration policies, while church groups have taken up welfare service provision and creating worker support networks. In the final section we assess these interventions as nascent forms of worker organization. We observe that the new attachments are based on ties to ethnicity and are created when workers congregate at locations outside the workplace, such as in a particular hostel or shopping centre or other ethnic space.3 These spaces serve the needs of migrant workers and provide the basis of resistance to exploitation.
