Solidarity Formations Under Flexibilisation: Workplace Struggles of Precarious Migrants in Thailand

Abstract

Recent scholarship on precarious labour has called attention to global transformations in employment regimes, which have given management greater freedom in setting the terms of work. Such ‘flexibility’ in employment is associated with a decrease in work, wage and livelihood security; more temporary, rather than open-ended, job contracts; a roll-back of employment benefits; heavy restrictions on workers’ collective organisation; and a greater reliance on migrant labour. To date, scholars have mostly emphasised the negative impact this transformation has had on workers’ solidarity. However, as this article highlights, flexibilisation can also function as an enabler of solidarity. Presenting an ethnographic case study of a workplace struggle at an export processing zone in northwest Thailand, it is argued that where flexible labour regimes incite shared grievances among workers and occlude the representative role of trade unions officials, they have facilitated self-organised struggles among workers based on a clear sense of common cause.