Resilience and reworking practices: Becoming the first-generation of industrial workers in Can Tho, Vietnam
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Resilience and reworking practices : Becoming the first-generation of industrial workers in Can Tho, Vietnam. / Hauge, Mads Martinus; Fold, Niels.
In: Geoforum, Vol. 77, 01.12.2016, p. 124-133.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Resilience and reworking practices
T2 - Becoming the first-generation of industrial workers in Can Tho, Vietnam
AU - Hauge, Mads Martinus
AU - Fold, Niels
PY - 2016/12/1
Y1 - 2016/12/1
N2 - For more than a decade, labor geography has stressed the importance of ‘giving primacy’ to workers in the analysis of global economic restructuring. However, the majority of contributions have focused on organized workers, leaving the issue of individual labor agency much in the dark. The aim of this article is to shed light on the agency of individual workers involved in rapid industrialization processes. In this endeavor we draw inspiration from recent contributions that have integrated Cindi Katz's threefold categorization of agency as reworking, resilience and resistance. In combination with this categorization, we apply a distinction between workers’ intentions to enter the industrial labor market and the consequences of doing so (i.e. the outcomes of their engagement). The discrepancy between intentions and outcomes is indicative of labor agency and points to the structural constraints that condition the labor market. The empirical part of the article draws on interviews with local and migrant first-generation workers in two settlements located next to an industrial zone in Can Tho Province in the Mekong River Delta Region of Vietnam. It is suggested that the alternating practices of reworking and resilience can be conceptualized as transformative trajectories - workers’ situated knowledge and practices evolve and change over time and is conditioned by the specific labor market contexts through which the individual moves.
AB - For more than a decade, labor geography has stressed the importance of ‘giving primacy’ to workers in the analysis of global economic restructuring. However, the majority of contributions have focused on organized workers, leaving the issue of individual labor agency much in the dark. The aim of this article is to shed light on the agency of individual workers involved in rapid industrialization processes. In this endeavor we draw inspiration from recent contributions that have integrated Cindi Katz's threefold categorization of agency as reworking, resilience and resistance. In combination with this categorization, we apply a distinction between workers’ intentions to enter the industrial labor market and the consequences of doing so (i.e. the outcomes of their engagement). The discrepancy between intentions and outcomes is indicative of labor agency and points to the structural constraints that condition the labor market. The empirical part of the article draws on interviews with local and migrant first-generation workers in two settlements located next to an industrial zone in Can Tho Province in the Mekong River Delta Region of Vietnam. It is suggested that the alternating practices of reworking and resilience can be conceptualized as transformative trajectories - workers’ situated knowledge and practices evolve and change over time and is conditioned by the specific labor market contexts through which the individual moves.
KW - Agency
KW - Labor
KW - Resilience
KW - Reworking
KW - Vietnam
U2 - 10.1016/j.geoforum.2016.10.013
DO - 10.1016/j.geoforum.2016.10.013
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:84994030112
VL - 77
SP - 124
EP - 133
JO - Geoforum
JF - Geoforum
SN - 0016-7185
ER -
ID: 170191461