Border Capitalism, Disrupted: Precarity and Struggle in a Southeast Asian Industrial Zone

Border Capitalism, Disrupted presents an insightful ethnography of migrant labor regulation at the Mae Sot Special Border Economic Zone on the Myanmar border in northwest Thailand. By bringing a new deployment of workerist and autonomist theory to bear on his fieldwork, Stephen Campbell highlights the ways in which workers' struggles have catalyzed transformations in labor regulation at the frontiers of capital in the global south. Looking outwards from Mae Sot, Campbell engages extant scholarship on flexibilization and precarious labor, which, typically, is based on the development experiences of the global north. Campbell emphasizes the everyday practices of migrants, the police, employers, NGOs, and private passport brokers to understand the "politics of precarity" and the new forms of worker organization and resistance that are emerging in Asian industrial zones. Focusing, in particular, on the uses and effects of borders as technologies of rule, Campbell argues that geographies of labor regulation can be read as the contested and fragile outcomes of prior and ongoing working-class struggles. Border Capitalism, Disrupted concludes that with the weakened influence of formal unions, understanding the role of these alternative forms of working-class organizations in labor-capital relations becomes critical. With a broad data set gleaned from almost two years of fieldwork, Border Capitalism, Disrupted will appeal directly to those in anthropology, labor studies, political economy, and geography, as well as Southeast Asian studies.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Abbreviations Map Introduction 1. Producing the Border 2. Capitalist Recuperation 3. Mobility Struggles 4. Coercive Policing 5. Class Recomposition 6. Organizing under Flexibilization Conclusion Postscript Notes Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Stephen Campbell is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Review :
Stephen Campbell's Border Capitalism, Disrupted insightfully describes Mae Sot as a space where a novel regulative 'bordering' process has produced a site uniquely ordered for global capitalism. His carefully-reasoned argument is introduced in the title of the book: that the production of two borders has enabled now 'legal' appropriation and exploitation of a fixed migrant population. (Tea Circle) An excellent addition to the expanding literature that analyses the situation of migrant workers in Mae Sot....and should be of great interest to people working on labour relations, labour migration, Southeast Asian studies, anthropology and political science. (Journal of Contemporary Asia) Border Capitalism, Disrupted is an outstanding book packed with well-executed ethnographic analysis of the experiential (migrants' lives) and the political (migration governance).... This is a must-read book for any student, scholar or policy official interested in Myanmar, Thailand, migration governance or the ethnography of policy. (Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology) Border Capitalism, Disrupted is one of the most fascinating books I have ever read about precarious migrant workers. The book does not just fill a gap in the literature regarding labor studies and political economy, it represents an important contribution to Southeast Asian Studies and Human Geography as well. Border Capitalism, Disrupted is well-researched and detailed, and is a valuable resource for scholars working on borders, precarity, Special Economic Zones, and resistance. (PoLAR) Border Capitalism, Disrupted is striking in its dynamism. It maintains a dynamic relationship between political economy analysis and the 'finer empirical grains' (p. 6) that Campbell encounters through intensive fieldwork; further, it provides a keen sense of the dynamic character of border capitalism itself... No doubt this book will be read for its contributions to the anthropology of labour. (Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography) Campbell provides theoretical rigour in deepening our understanding of the politics of precarity and flexibilization of labour in Southeast Asia with his geographical and historical specificity, which make this book a must read by scholars seeking to locate working-class struggles in Asia's dramatic industrial transformation. (Pacific Affairs) His argument is supported by rich ethnographic evidence from twenty months of fieldwork, including firsthand accounts of his experiences with local bureaucracy and the detention of his visiting in-laws by the Thai police. Overall, this book will be of interest to those studying migration, governance, and labor from the vantage points of anthropology, sociology, political economy, or development. (Society for the Antrhopology of Work)