From global workers to local entrepreneurs: Sri Lanka’s former global factory workers in rural Sri Lanka

Abstract

Working in Sri Lanka’s urban free trade zones (FTZs) introduces Sri Lanka’s rural women to neoliberal ways of fashioning selves, which subsequently not only shape village entrepreneurial activities but also initiate negotiations in kinship, marriage, domestic arrangements, and community relations. The knowledges and networks that they develop while at the FTZ allow former workers to connect with global production networks as subcontractors, making them part of the cascading system of subcontracting that furthers the precarity of regular FTZ work. This article explores how these former workers manipulate varied forms of capital – social, cultural and monetary – to become local entrepreneurs and community leaders, while simultaneously initiating changes in rural social hierarchies and gender norms. When neoliberal economic restructuring manifests within local contexts it results in new articulations of what it is to be an entrepreneur and what it is to be a worthy, young, married woman. Overall, the paper sheds light on the fragmented and uneven manner in which neoliberal ethos take root in rural South Asia.

Keywords:

• Global factory workers
• Sri Lanka
• female entrepreneurs
• neoliberal subjects
• social change
• manipulating capital

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Chari, Fraternal Capital.

2 Mezzadri, “Industrial Garment Clusters.”

3 De Neve, “Entrapped Entrepreneurship.”

4 Fernandez-Kelly, For We are Sold; Ong, Spirits of Resistance; Mills, Thai Women; Salzinger, Genders in Production; Pun, Made in China.

5 Board of Investment of Sri Lanka, “Katunayake-General Information.”

6 Hewamanne, Sri Lanka’s Global Factory Workers.

7 Dabindu Collective, Living for the Day; Hewamanne, “Duty Bound?”; Hewamanne, “Sewing Their Way Up.”

8 Hewamanne, Sri Lanka’s Global Factory Workers; Hewamanne, “Crafting Social Change.”

9 Hewamanne, Stitching Identities; Hewamanne, Sri Lanka’s Global Factory Workers.

10 Mas Holdings, “Women Go Beyond Gallery.”

11 Todoli-Signes, “The ‘Gig Economy.’”

12 Madurawala, “Economically Empowering Sri Lankan Women.”

13 Harvey, Brief History of Neoliberalism, 2.

14 Rose, Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought; Gunel, “Producing Neoliberal Subjects”; Fevre, Individualism and Inequality.

15 Gershon, “Employing the CEO of Me.”

16 Harvey, Brief History of Neoliberalism; Rose, Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought.

17 Ong, “Neoliberalism as a Mobile Technology,” 5.

18 Mills, Gendered Morality Tales.”

19 Lynch, Juki Girls, Good Girls.

20 Hewamanne, Stitching Identities.

21 Freeman, Entrepreneurial Selves.

22 Gibson-Graham, Postcapitalist Politics.

23 Foucault, Birth of Biopolitics, 226–35.

24 Brooks, “Psst! “Human Capital.”

25 These microcredit programmes are run by local branch offices associated with international and national organisations such as CIDA, UNICEF or FORUT. Major state and private banks also provide microcredit to rural women. High interest, harassment and court cases associated with defaulting are mostly associated with micro loans taken from private financial institutions such as Lanka Orient Leasing Company (LOLC).

26 Karim, Microfinance and Its Discontents. Christian, Microfinance as a Determinant of Domestic Violence.

27 Guganeshan, “Easy Access to Credit Triggers Violence.”

28 Christian, Microfinance as a Determinant of Domestic Violence; Islam, “Domestic Violence in Bangladesh.”

29 Mezzadri and Majumder, The “Afterlife” of Cheap Labour.

30 Ibid.

31 Bolis and Hughes, Women’s Economic Empowerment; Khalid and Chaudhry, “Violence and Economic Empowerment.”

32 Vyas and Watts, “How Does Economic Empowerment Affect.”

33 Delaney, Burchielli, and Connor, “Positioning Women Homeworkers.”

34 Mezzadri and Fan, “Classes of Labour.”

35 Harvey, Brief History of Neoliberalism, 3.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Wenner Gren Foundation for anthropological Research, the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies and the British Academy.

Notes on contributors

Sandya Hewamanne

Sandya Hewamanne teaches anthropology at the University of Essex, United Kingdom. She is the author of Stitching Identities in a Free Trade Zone: Gender and Politics in Sri Lanka (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008) and Sri Lanka’s Global Factory Workers: (Un)Disciplined Desires and Sexual Struggles in a Post-Colonial Society (Routledge, 2016).