Transnational Labor Regimes and the Cambodian Case of Asianizing Capitalist Development

초록

This chapter presents the increasing intra-Asian flows of capital that ties Asian economies to one another through building complex production networks across the region. The increasing capital flows also tend to transnationalize labor regimes in Asia’s developing countries through transnational corporations’ intervention in the formation and maintenance of labor regimes physically located within national territories, on the one hand, and by integrating such labor regimes into a transnational hierarchy built for profitable business operation across borders, on the other. These transnational labor regimes (TLRs) tend to take a more acute form when it comes to controlling workers in newly developing countries such as Cambodia, whose industrialization heavily depends on transnational investment made by Asian transnational corporations (TNCs). Cambodia’s post-civil war economic development has crucially relied upon the garment sector, built almost entirely by foreign direct investment (FDI) from Asia. Asian FDI firms have created transnational capital relations with Cambodian workers and integrated Cambodia into the TLRs built over the world by Asian TNCs. Cambodia’s transition to an outright authoritarian neoliberalism featuring the one-party-state and violent labor repression in the latest decade reveals various problematic consequences of a development strategy relying on TLRs in workers’ welfare and other social concerns. © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Chang Kyung-Sup, Kim Taekyoon and Lee Joonkoo; individual chapters, the contributors. All rights reserved.