Showing papers in "European Journal of East Asian Studies in 2018"

Patterns of Industrialisation and the State of Industrial Labour in Post- WTO -Accession Vietnam

Abstract: Since the mid-2000s Vietnam has become an important manufacturing hub in garment and, increasingly, in electronics. However, the expansion of an FDI -dominated, export-oriented manufacturing did not contribute to a genuine national industrialisation process and the weight of manufacturing on GDP has actually declined. Low industrial wages (associated with poor working conditions) have emerged as a structural (rather than transitory) competitive factor for the country’s participation in global production networks.

Navigating migrant trajectories through private actors: Burmese labour migration to Malaysia

Abstract: Recent research on the ‘migration industry’ has provided a means to interrogate how private actors come to be used as a means to facilitate, direct and control migration. Both through incorporating private actors into security functions and outsourcing certain functions to labour brokers, the use of migration industry actors is an important part of the ways in which the state works to maintain its sovereign control over territory and the ways people move across it. Yet this is not the only way in which migration industry actors are used. Instead, private actors also play a key role for migrants, although attention towards how migrants themselves perceive and use these actors during the migration process has received far less attention. Using timelines of migrant trajectories from Burma/Myanmar to Malaysia, the following study therefore sets out to map the private actors involved in the migrants’ projects to travel to and stay in Malaysia—and to investigate how these actors are strategically used by migrants as a means to increase their room to manoeuvre during the migration process. In approaching this, the study combines literature on the privatisation and commercialisation of international migration with scholarship on migration trajectories and migrant agency. Empirically the study builds upon fieldwork conducted in the Burmese migrant community in the city of George Town in northern Malaysia.

Postcolonial Capitalism and the Politics of Dispossession: Political Trajectories in Southern Myanmar

Abstract: This article examines the trajectory of struggles over land and resources in Dawei, a town in southern Myanmar. The site of a major special economic zone project, Dawei has seen sustained mobilisation around displacement, dispossession and environmental degradation, against the backdrop of national political and economic reforms. Recently, scholars have argued that earlier visions of postcolonial transition have lost their empirical and political purchase, as farmers dispossessed of land increasingly become excluded from formal capitalist production. What happens to politics and political form if dynamics of exclusion, rather than transition, organise political activity under today’s conditions of accumulation? Repurposing Kalyan Sanyal’s concept of postcolonial capitalism, this article describes and theorises the politics of dispossession in Dawei. Tracing the political activities of activist groups and villagers, it argues that two contrasting political trajectories—one secular–egalitarian, one situational–differential—constitute a heterogeneous political field, reflecting the complexity of postcolonial capitalism itself.

Mobility Norms in Free Trade Agreements: Migration Governance in Asia between Regional Integration and Free Trade

Abstract: Notwithstanding their traditional attachment to sovereignty, Southeast and East Asian countries have embraced a dynamic agenda of labour mobility liberalisation through trade agreements. This article assesses the free movement agenda within ASEAN from a multi-level perspective, comparing it to ASEAN countries’ corresponding commitments within the World Trade Organisation’s General Agreement on Trade in Services and Free Trade Agreements ( FTA s) concluded as a group or individually with non- ASEAN countries. Contrary to other trade aspects it turns out that intra-regional commitments within ASEAN do not significantly exceed multilateral ones, and score below the level of liberalisation achieved in ASEAN + and bilateral FTA s. This article interprets this discrepancy as a consequence of strong economic and labour market differences among ASEAN members as well as the lower sensitivity of allegedly technocratic FTA s for considerations of national sovereignty. The article concludes with the limits of this trade policy approach for migration governance and migrants’ rights.

ASEAN People-to-People Connectivity: The Role of the Mutual Recognition Regime

Abstract: The concept of intra-regional connectivity is emerging as the rationale for the ASEAN regional project and will develop around three pillars: the physical infrastructure, the institutions and the people. Specifically, the facilitation of the free movement of highly skilled migrant workers at the regional level is identified in ASEAN documents as a primary mechanism to achieve people-to-people connectivity. The paper aims to study the emerging regional mobility framework under ASEAN by focusing attention on the potential impact of mutual recognition arrangements ( MRA s) on professional services as connecting instruments. The objective is to provide new insights into the building of ASEAN ’s regional process by taking the mutual recognition regime as a means to reconcile the traditional prerogatives of sovereignty and new common concerns in the context of cross-border human mobility and economic development. The review of the current evolution of ASEAN MRA architecture will focus on the challenges and promises of the intra-regional cooperation in developing the legal framework by fostering a rule-based organisation. To this end, the analysis will be complemented by an examination of Thailand’s mutual recognition initiatives for professionals in the health services.

The Impact of Severe Air Pollution in January 2013 in Beijing on Sustained Elevation of Public Environmental Concern

Abstract: Harmful and sudden events trigger intense media coverage which in turn can elevate public interest in a problem within an instant. A period of heavy air pollution in Beijing in January 2013 may have been such a case. This sudden and intense period of air pollution featured historically high levels of fine particulate concentrations and was assumed by observers to be a trigger for shifting public perception and increased pressure for policy adjustment. This study examines whether this period of severe air pollution indeed triggered increased public scrutiny, following which the influential factors behind this development are outlined. In this context, a focus is given to the interplay of air quality, media reporting and public discussion in shaping sustained public interest. Based on a timeline analysis and survey data, it is argued that the combination of historically high air pollution with intense media reporting did lead to higher public attention to the topic.

Keeping Up Appearances: State Sovereignty and the Protection of Refugees in Southeast Asia

Abstract: The fact that most Southeast Asian States are not party to the main instruments pertaining to the protection of refugees has given rise to the ‘rejection of international refugee law’ theory, which has largely dominated the literature on the issues pertaining to refugees in Southeast Asia. Based on an analysis of the practices of Southeast Asian States with regard to refugees, this article argues that although they are not party to the 1951 Convention, the main countries of asylum in the region, i.e. Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, de facto treat differently the people they acknowledge to be in need of some sort of protection: that is, refugees. Unlike other irregular migrants, refugees are protected against non-refoulement and, to a certain extent, are also protected from detention for irregular entry into the territory of another State. In doing so, Southeast Asian States maintain a ‘fiction’ according to which they preserve sovereignty over the borders of their countries while in reality largely accepting the limitations posed by international refugee law.

Corporatist Institutions and Militant Actions: Building an Industrial Relations System in Myanmar

Abstract: Drawing on data from archives and fieldwork in Myanmar, a country in political change from a five-decade authoritarian regime to a quasi-civilian one, this study explores the reasons for a prevalence of corporatist aspects at the early stage of reforms. The early introduction of corporatism in Myanmar diverges from other Asian countries that experienced transitions accompanied by labour militancy, and only later embraced corporatism when political power shifted to elected pro-labour parties. This article argues, first, that corporatism prevails in the rhetoric of the labour movement and in Myanmar’s industrial relations institutions, while labour militancy has simultaneously increased; second, corporatism in Myanmar has few historical precedents but has recently been promoted primarily by the International Labour Organisation ( ILO ); and third, while corporatism has failed to bring about industrial peace, the rhetoric and institutions of corporatism may limit the political potential of Myanmar’s labour movement by restricting unions’ activities to economic concerns.

Laos’s Peripheral Centrality in Southeast Asia: Mobility, Labour and Regional Integration

Abstract: Laos’s position at the centre of the Southeast Asian mainland has entailed peripherality to regional loci of power. Its geography of peripheral centrality has however resulted in Laos becoming a realm of contestation between powerful neighbours. The analysis traces the construction of Laos within a regional space from pre-colonial times to contemporary special economic zones. Laos has been produced through mobility, foreign actors’ attempts to reorient space to their sphere of influence, and transnational class relations incorporating Lao workers and peasants, Lao elites and foreign powers. These elements manifest within current special economic zone projects.

Migrant Waste Collectors in Thailand’s Informal Economy: Mapping Class Relations

Abstract: Recent scholarship on primitive accumulation and deagrarianisation in the global South has addressed a decline in formal employment prospects, leaving most ex-peasants (and their heirs) struggling to earn a livelihood in the informal economy. Taking this phenomenon as a point of departure, and drawing on the case of migrant waste collectors in Mae Sot, Thailand, this article examines the multiple ways that waste collectors are embedded in informal relations of production and exchange. This variable relational embeddedness has implications, it is argued, for the forms of struggle available to those engaged in informal labour.

Mega-FTAs in the Asia-Pacific Region: A Japanese Perspective

Abstract: The emerging wave of mega- FTA s during the global economic crisis era has so far attracted considerable academic attention. This paper primarily investigates two of the mega- FTA s, namely TPP and RCEP , from the perspective of Japan. It focuses on Japan’s role and interests in the launch of mega- FTA s and how Japan tries to keep them on track, with protectionism on the rise worldwide (particularly on the US side).

Challenging State Sovereignty in the Age of Migration: Concluding Remarks

Abstract: This two-part Special Issue has examined the migration–sovereignty nexus in the context of intra-regional migration in Asia, with specific focus on Southeast Asia (‘Special Issue’). The sub-region represents the perfect laboratory for teasing out the complexities involved in (actual and rhetorical) attempts made by states to control and regulate migration in what has become a space characterised by increasing diversity of (collective and individual) actors operating at various levels. The diversity, complexity and breadth of migratory movements discussed in this Special Issue thus constitute one of the policy fields where the sovereignty norm clashes with the need to manage interdependence. The seven empirical studies in this Special Issue have examined current political, economic, social and legal dimensions of migration in Southeast Asia from an interdisciplinary perspective, linking the discussion of the migration–sovereignty nexus to ‘regional migration regimes’, ‘the transnational–national intersection’ and ‘grass-roots responses’. The common message that emerges from the papers in this issue—that state sovereignty in the area of migration is being challenged from multiple levels—leads us to argue for a future research agenda which would align the study of sovereignty more closely with governance studies as well as studies on norm diffusion. Such an agenda would contribute new insights into emerging forms of sovereignty beyond the confines of the state.