Gender, Families and Labour: Reflections on the Asian Experiences
ICAS-IIAS panel Berlin, Germany 9-12 August
Organized by CLARA
Contact persons: Prof. Marcel van der Linden and Dr. Ratna Saptari

Studies on labour movements, migration and labour relations have often focused on unions, workplaces or policies regulating labour as units of analyses with clearly defined boundaries. Despite the contribution of feminist scholarship and household studies, studies on Asian labour whether men or women, are still often looking at communities where workers live and the families of which they are members, separately from the public sphere. 'Workplace' and 'home' are often seen as dichotomies that generate different dynamics and therefore need different tools of analysis. In the last two decades it has been shown how closely interlinked these two spheres are. The family and community are crucial in workers' networks and survival.

In the past some scholars contended that decisions to work are usually made not by individuals but by families. 'Family strategies' were considered to define the timing, the kind of work and the allocation of income of individual workers. Family linkages often provide both the financial and the cultural capital which make employment possible. On the other hand workers' autonomy and independence are also often undermined by family relations and obligations. It is to these tensions that we would like to focus on. Since the political involvement of workers, men and women, are usually considered to occur only out of the home, we should look more at the kind of solidarities, alliances, tensions that people build through their family relations and networks should be considered more carefully. Women and men play different roles in these networks. To what extent do these inhibit or facilitate the emergence of collective or individual action to challenge existing power structures?

How do kinship systems influence the way workers are recruited, absorbed into the labour market and shape the kinds of networks they form and identities they adopt? From the side of the workers what kind of tensions do these family links create? How does the gendered nature of these kin-based relations affect the workers' position at the place of work? How does the redefinition of familial relations and gender ideologies at the place of work affect the family relations and structures at home?

SPEAKERS

Rachel Silvey, Department of Geography, University of Colorado, USA

Spaces of Protest: Gender, Migration and Labor Activism in West Java

While is clear that the geography of global economic restructuring is uneven, the ways in which local level differences are constituted are less well understood. As an entry point into understanding local differences in the changing international division of labor, this article compares women factory workers labor activism in two villages in West Java. Concentrating on differences in labor activism in the two sites provides a lens onto the geographically specific conditions enabling and constraining workers actions.
Based on in-depth interviews and a survey of workers in the two sites, the article illustrates the operation of workers household compositions, migrant status, social networks, and gender identities in shaping the gender geographies of protest. In so doing, it contributes to broader debates about how inter-scalar interactions shape the local gender dynamics of economic restructuring. Keywords: labor, gender, Indonesia, migration, social networks.

G.G. Weix, Dept. Of Anthropology, Univ. of Montana, USA

Lending One's Labour, Leaving One's Children: Ethnographic Studies of Indonesian Industrial Workers, 1961- 2000

For over forty years studies of Indonesian industrial labour have documented the transformation of a rural agrarian economy marked by increased commodity production, stimulated by global capitalism, particularly on Java. Feminist scholars have focused on gender ideologies deployed to create all female workforces, and revealed new alliances or conflicts of interest resulting among workers, their families and kin networks. They have also expanded analysis of labour relations in factory workshops to include villages of origin, urban neighborhoods,and the homes of firm owners. Thus New Order capitalism, assumed to be a public social formation, appears to have had a profound influence on cultural notions of gender, family and kinship ties.
This paper traces these themes in ethnographic accounts to underscore the historical specificity of capitalism in Indonesia as it has affected social relations at home and in the workplace, indeed, often transposing them in the process. Examples are drawn from an ethnographic study of the clove cigarette industry centered on the north and east coasts of Java, famous for its use of an all female workforce prior to mechanization of cigarette production. With the end of Suharto's rule in 1998, ethnographies of the New Order are now historical portraits of social analysis, particularly of Javanese women and younger workers (Hill, Hadiz). In this case study, local discourse about 'lending one's labour' to fellow workers is discussed as rhetorical gestures to cast factory work as generating forms of social debt. Also, the dilemmas of making arrangements for childcare are described in relation to the shift from piece-rate work to wage work in factory settings. Both issues transpose wage labor as extending familial obligations, despite the capitalist relations of production that prevail.

Rima Sabban, Dubai University College for Applied Studies, UAE

Crossing Boundaries, Bridging Families - Globalization and the Restructuring of Families Servicing the Labour Market

Studies of labor migration have been marginalizing the role of the family and kinship relations and peripherizing the centrality of their role to the labor market. This paper reassesses the role of the family and its centrality to the process of labor migration, and the structure of the labor market based on a study done in the United Arab Emirates, on domestic workers migrating to UAE in order to improve their financial status at home. Through extended interviews with foreign domestics, coming all from South-Asian countries such as India, Sri Lanka, Philippines and Indonesia, this paper looks at the central role the family exerts at the time of decision making the domestic worker undergo. It does also focus on the readjustment the whole nuclear as well as extended family undergoes in order to facilitate the accessibility of the domestic worker to the Global labor market.
The paper then relates the restructuring of the family on the sending countries to the restructuring of the family on the receiving side, and provides an integrated ground for analyzing the changing role of labor market along the changing role of families. In its final part, the paper reconstitute the central relationship of the family to the Global Labor Market, and provides the ground to reassess the structure of household on both ends of the migration process to all other types of power relationships such as gender and race relationships.

Nandita Shah and Nandita Gandhi, AKHSARA - Mumbai, India

Women Industrial Workers in Mumbai, India: Between Work and Family.

In 1991, India opened its economy to the world and since then radical changes have occurred. This study which examines women industrial workers in Mumbai looks at how women workers have experienced macro level changes at their workplace and households. Both are being restructured and both are interlinked in the lives of women. These workers come from households, with poor housing conditions, one or two rooms shared by 4 to 5 members and have a low per capita income. In response to these changes they develop their own set of strategies which are culturally bound, as individuals and as part of their households. As many of them are young unmarried women, this places them in contradictory situations when their needs are sometimes in tension with 'the family's' needs. On the one hand it tries to increase its income to meet inflation and a higher cost of living. On the other the household reduces its expenditure levels. Many of the households use their contacts with neighbours, friends and relatives to seek jobs. Since social networks are often developed through reciprocal exchanges, their obtainment of jobs lead to various other social obligations which further effect their position within the households but also how other members of the household allocate their time.

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