CLARA One-Day Seminar
Labour in Asia: A Comparative Perspective
14 September 2000
at the International Institute of Social History
Cruquiusweg 31, Amsterdam

An increasing number of scholars in the Netherlands are studying work processes, labour migration and labour movements in different parts of Asia, and many of them are incorporated in discussion groups in different research schools but often have little knowledge of the work of labour scholars outside their research schools. Within this framework, the international research programme, CLARA, in collaboration with the IIAS branch office Amsterdam, organized a meeting of these social scientists who are primarily based in the Netherlands. This meeting is part of an annual initiative and this year five speakers (from the Netherlands, India, France and Denmark) gave a presentation on various aspects of labour in India and Pakistan, in Malaysia, Thailand and Japan.

The increasing commercialisation and liberalization of national economies have often resulted in similar policies between governments. Nevertheless because of the diverse nature of local structures the outcome resulting from these policies are usually highly diverse in nature. Therefore for instance, structural adjustment policies, which means reduced state intervention and subsidies meant increased competitiveness and price of agricultural inputs, etc. Prof. Utsa Patnaik from the JNU, New Delhi, India argued that structural adjustment manifested itself in the increased rates of interest on credit for agricultural inputs in India, which squeezed the position of well-to-do landowners so that the political organizations could take advantage of the discontent of the landowning class. This resulted in the political alliance between agricultural workers and the well-to-do landowners of Gujarat in challenging the policies of the government. This alliance was however, not without certain tensions since agricultural workers have very specific demands also. Dr. Kristoffel Lieten, from the University of Amsterdam concentrated on the Sindh area in Pakistan and showed that unlike Gujarat agricultural workers were not politically mobilized and were in fact tied to the traditional feudal structures. This is particularly manifested in sharecropping tenancy arrangements where production relations were imbued with feudal relations covering other aspects of the workers' lives.

Another aspect of increased global links is the issue of international migration, which was represented by two of the presentations, namely that of Bangladeshi workers who migrate to the industrial zones of Malaysia, and the Thai and Filipina women who fill the sex industry of Japan. Ms. Anja Rudnick, from the University of Amsterdam examined the way employment in Malaysia for Muslim Bangladeshi women were a source of independence, but at the same time a site of exploitation. Bangladeshi women, who were the second largest migrant group in Penang, Malaysia, were stigmatised as 'bad' women by the communities from which they came, but their the amount of remittances they could send counterbalanced these images and the prestige women obtain upon return will largely depend on their economic success. Dr. Nicola Piper, from NIAS, Copenhagen looked at the less ambiguous situation of Thai and Filipina women in Japan, and how the labour markets in Japan in the present period are a continuation and reflection of past patterns. Korean women were already serving the demand within the Japanese labour market particularly in the '50s and the networks which developed in the early '70s which is related to Japanese investment policies in the region, have helped to shape the labour market of the present. Ms. Isabelle Vagneron from Univ. of Auvergne, France examined the impact of internal, rather than international migration, on the nature of industrial employment in Thailand particularly as a result of the developments in the clothing industry and increased competition in the world market. The huge intra-annual migratory flows of workers who go to the rural areas to harvest and return to the urban areas again to seek employment have resulted in the development of enterprises which attempt to take advantage of the large turnover by using a large amount of homeworkers. Again these homeworkers are in the ambiguous position of obtaining low wages but at the same time are able to combine their income-earning activities with other types of work be this domestic work or other non-farm wage work.

These five presentations showed how labour relations in different sub-regions of Asia are subject to certain common macro-level structures and yet the way in which these structures manifest themselves in the different localities is clearly shaped and mediated by local and historical specifities. This brings also problems in the implementation of comparative studies. What is comparable? How can we interpret similar forms in different contexts and different forms but similar functions in a comparative manner? These are ongoing questions that may never be resolved but examining labour relations in different contexts brings us to the awareness of the complexities involved.

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