The political economy of dive tourism: precarity at the periphery in Malaysia

ABSTRACT

Using a critical political economy approach and the concept of labour precarity, the international dive tourism industry in Sabah, Malaysia and its workers’ vulnerabilities are interrogated. Fieldwork data highlights dive tourism's socio-economic impacts and the precarity of labour within the international tourism sector and also critiques it as a development strategy for a peripheral region. The paper challenges the optimistic views of labour precarity found in the existing political economy literature. Rather than identifying labour empowerment, evidence demonstrates significant worker vulnerability, uncertainty, and contingency – especially among ethnic minorities – resulting from Malaysia's state-led rentier economy.

摘要

本文采用批判性政治经济学的取向和劳工不稳定的概念分析了马来西亚沙巴州国际潜水产业, 拷问了其工人所面临的脆弱性。田野调查数据凸显了潜水旅游的社会经济影响与这一国际旅游部门的灵活劳工, 也批评将之作为边远地区发展战略所存在的问题。文章挑战了现有政治经济学文献中对灵活劳工的乐观观点, 相反识别了劳工需要增权, 证据也表明了马来西亚国家主导的食利经济中突出的工人 (尤其是亚洲少数族裔) 脆弱性, 不确定性和意外事故。

KEYWORDS:

• Precarity
• rentier state
• labour
• communities
• Malaysia
• Borneo

关键词:

• 不稳定
• 食利阶层
• 劳工
• 社区
• 马来西亚
• 婆罗洲

Acknowledgment

The research on which this paper reports is an output from the PMI2 Project funded by the UK Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) for the benefit of the Malaysian Higher Education Sector and the UK Higher Education Sector. Any views expressed are not necessarily those of BIS, nor British Council. In addition we thank Bilge Daldeniz, Jorn Fricke and Caroline Walsh for their assistance with fieldwork, as well as the interview respondents who generously gave up their time. We also thank Sheela Agarwal, Helen Brunt, Julian Clifton, Amran Hamzah and Kate Robinson for their helpful comments on earlier versions of the paper, and Jorn Fricke for preparing the map. The usual disclaimers apply.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. It is useful, at this stage to acknowledge the growing literature from tourism and other disciplines on network theories, and its potential relevance to this paper. Space precludes this from our discussion; however, we draw attention to the 2000s, a particularly prolific decade of writing about ‘an alternative way of looking at and researching tourism’ (van der Duim, Ren and Joahnnesson (2017, p. 139). See Johannesson (2005), Latour (2005), Van der Duim (2007), and more recent publications by Michael (2017) and Van der Duim, Ren and Johannesson (2017).

2. Personal communication, Professor Amran Hamzah, 5 October 2015

3. Fieldwork took place in July 2008 and May 2009.

4. Unfortunately, one of the UK academics was unable to join fieldwork either year due to personal circumstances.

5. The success of this ethnic group could be attributed to guanxi, a Confucian idea which remains ‘a major dynamic in Chinese society today’ (Li, Lai and Feng, 2007, p. 116). A literal translation of guanxi, according to Li, Lai and Feng (2007) is ‘personal relationship networking that permeates social and economic life’, and thus highly influential.

6. Personal communication, Professor Amran Hamzah, 5 October 2015

Additional information

Funding

British Council PMI2 (RC18).

Notes on contributors

Mark P. Hampton

Mark P. Hampton is a Reader in Tourism Management at Kent Business School and the School of Anthropology and Conservation at the University of Kent. His research interests include small-scale tourism development in South-East Asia, and coastal and island tourism.

Julia Jeyacheya

Julia Jeyacheya is a Senior Lecturer in International Tourism Management at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her research interests include political economy of tourism development, especially South-East Asia.

Donna Lee

Donna Lee is a Professor of International Political Economy at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her research interests are international political economy and small states.