Translocal Precarity: Labor and Social Reproduction in Cambodia

Abstract

Many people in the Global South have left behind rural homes in search of employment in urban and transnational labor markets often defined by precarious work. Employment is insecure, uncertain, and temporary, and for transnational migrants, there is the constant risk of deportation. Although geographers have studied such migrant precarity, there is an increasing interest in its translocal dimensions, particularly related to how precarious work travels home and affects left-behind family members. This scholarship, however, tends to assume that precarity arises primarily in the spaces of production. Drawing on twenty months of ethnographic fieldwork in rural Cambodia, we argue that precarity simultaneously emerges from the challenges of social reproduction faced by kin in rural communities. As such, we further develop the concept of translocal precarity to capture the fragility of social reproduction strategies that migrant households employ across space. Translocal precarity is the looming threat that family members’ efforts to support one another might fall apart due to the instability of urban labor markets in tandem with a lack of sustaining infrastructures in rural areas. Our argument advances geographic scholarship on precarity by explaining how it is experienced across the translocal relations that connect the productive and reproductive labor of household members living in different locations.

发展中国家的许多人离开农村，在城市和跨国劳动力市场中寻找并不稳定的工作。工作没有保障、不确定而且是暂时性的，跨国移民还持续面临着被驱逐出境的风险。尽管地理学家已经研究了移民的这种不稳定性，但是，我们日益关注不稳定性的跨地域层面，尤其是不稳定工作如何回家及其如何影响家庭留守成员。然而，这些研究的假设是：不确定性主要出现在生产空间。基于对柬埔寨农村20个月的人种学实地调查，我们认为，农村亲属面临的社会再生产挑战也产生了不稳定。因此，我们进一步发展了跨地域不确定性的概念，来获取移民家庭跨空间社会再生产策略的脆弱性。跨地域不稳定性是一种迫在眉睫的威胁：由于城市劳动力市场的不稳定性以及农村缺乏可持续基础设施，家庭成员相互支持的努力可能会瓦解。本文阐述了异地家庭成员的生产和再生产劳动的跨地域联系及其不稳定性，推动了不稳定性的地理学研究。

Mucha gente del Sur Global ha dejado atrás su terruño rural en busca de empleo en los mercados laborales urbanos y transnacionales, a menudo definidos por el trabajo precario. Allí el empleo es inseguro, incierto y temporal, y para los migrantes transnacionales existe el riesgo constante de la deportación. Si bien los geógrafos han estudiado esa precariedad para la población migrante, se nota en particular un creciente interés por sus dimensiones translocales, en especial en relación con el modo como el trabajo precario afecta con sus efectos al hogar y los miembros de la familia que se dejaron atrás. Sin embargo, estos estudios tienen la tendencia a asumir que la precariedad surge primariamente en los espacios de producción. A partir de veinte meses de trabajo etnográfico de campo en las áreas rurales de Camboya, argüimos que la precariedad surge simultáneamente de los retos de la reproducción social a los que se enfrentan las parentelas en las comunidades rurales. Así las cosas, nosotros avanzamos en el desarrollo del concepto de precariedad translocal, para captar la fragilidad de las estrategias de reproducción social empleadas en el espacio por los hogares de migrantes. La precariedad translocal es la amenaza inminente de que los esfuerzos de los miembros de la familia para apoyarse entre sí puedan colapsar debido a la inestabilidad de los mercados laborales urbanos, a la par con la falta de infraestructura de ayuda en las áreas rurales. Nuestra argumentación impulsa los estudios geográficos sobre precariedad al explicar cómo esa precariedad se experimenta a través de las relaciones translocales que conectan el trabajo productivo y reproductivo de los miembros de la familia, que viven en lugares diferentes.

Key Words:

• Cambodia
• labor
• migration
• precarity
• social reproduction

关键词:

• 柬埔寨
• 劳动力
• 移民
• 不稳定性
• 社会再生产

Palabras clave:

• Camboya
• migración precariedad
• reproducción social
• trabajo

Acknowledgments

We thank Elliott Prasse-Freeman, Benjamin Lawrence, and members of the Social and Cultural Geography research group in the Department of Geography at National University of Singapore for their helpful comments on previous drafts of this article. We are also deeply grateful to our friends, colleagues, and interlocutors in Cambodia who provided their time and insights to make this research possible.

Notes

1 A hamlet is a spatially distinct cluster of households that participate in agricultural activities, religious ceremonies, and daily events together.

2 No households had members working in Vietnam despite its proximity, because of limited job opportunities and low wages and because people looked unfavorably on working for Vietnamese employers.

3 Twenty-five households completed the survey, whereas the remaining four did not because they had left for seasonal work.

4 These youth were selected through a snowball method until saturation of the topic was reached. One of these youth lived in the study hamlet; the rest were from nearby areas of the district. Kunthea and her brother were the only youth interviewed who were from the same household.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

W. Nathan Green

W. NATHAN GREEN is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the National University of Singapore, Singapore 117570. E-mail: [email protected]. His research interests include critical agrarian studies, political ecology, and financial geography in Cambodia and Southeast Asia.

Jennifer Estes

JENNIFER ESTES is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the National University of Singapore, Singapore 117570. E-mail: [email protected]. As a cultural anthropologist, her research focuses on the lives of youth and their families in the context of Cambodia’s changing political economy.