05/04/2017 GTD Colloquium by Dennis Arnold

When: April 5, 2017, from 15:30 to 17:00

Where: Spiegelzaal Soiron building – Grote Gracht 80-82, Maastricht University

 The topic of this lecture is:

Labour regime transformation in Myanmar: Constitutive processes of contestation

By Dennis Arnold

University of Amsterdam (UVA)

Abstract

This presentation focuses on the case of a workers’ strike in Myanmar’s ready-made garment sector to illustrate how differently-situated actors have engaged at multiple scales to influence emerging forms of labour regulation in the country. The analysis is drawn out through an historicization of domestic regulatory transformation. As a hegemonic project targeting industrial peace for purposes of capital accumulation, Myanmar’s labour regime has been shaped by various actors outside of government circles, including International Labour Organization personnel, Myanmar trade unionists, foreign governments, transnational corporations, domestic capitalists, and Myanmar workers. Proposing a multiscalar reading of labour regime transformation attentive to constitutive processes of contestation, this research opens up for analysis ways in which varied, and at times unofficial, relations coalesce to shape labour regulation.

Dennis Arnold is Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam, Department of Human Geography, Planning and International Development. He is a geographer trained in political economy and development studies. He completed his PhD in the Department of Geography at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2010).  Dennis currently publishes and teaches on labour and migration; global production network analysis; geo-economics and geo-politics; and borders of continental Southeast Asia. His work has appeared in Antipode, Journal of Contemporary Asia, American Behavioral Scientist, Geography Compass, Routledge edited books, and a monograph published by the Human Rights in Asia Book Series (2007, Mahidol University).