Suchergebnisse

Malaysia's labor shortages can be attributed to rapid industrialization; higher educational attainment leading to external and internal migration and labor shortages; and poor wages and working conditions in plantations, the construction industry and the service sector. Such shortages have been met largely through the use of illegal migrant workers from Indonesia, south Thailand and the southern Philippines. Implementation of the government's plan for economic restructuring, 1971–1990, was assisted by such workers; however, the government has also recognized the socioeconomic problems engendered by illegal migration. Policies to facilitate temporary labor migration in key sectors are being developed.

Sabah has been the recipient of countless migrants for centuries. The most recent of these are largely Indonesians and Filipinos who come for economic reasons. The current economic turmoil has affected the capacity of the state to provide employment to both local and foreign workers. While Sabah is working towards reducing its dependence on foreign workers, it is likely that Sabah will continue to depend on migrant workers in the short and immediate term. The Sabah experience suggests that a more systematic approach is needed to regulate the flow of migrant labor in the region. But for this to succeed, the support and cooperation of all the relevant parties would be essential.

Drawing on Foucault's concepts of biopolitical subject formation and governmentality, this article seeks to understand transnational state power and how Vietnamese migrant workers negotiate within a transnational framework both while working in Malaysia and upon their return to Vietnam. By conducting multi-sited interviews in Vietnam and Malaysia between 2008 and 2015, we contribute to the transnational labor migration literature by focusing on Vietnamese factory and construction workers in Malaysia and their resistance to transnational state power. We argue that these two emerging economies, as part of the neoliberal world, use their systems, media, and technologies to produce and manage citizens (in Vietnam) and non-citizen subjects (migrants in Malaysia) who comply with labor export policy and foreign worker policy, respectively. These two states ensure both government and individual accumulation to sustain their power. Meanwhile, Vietnamese migrant subjects negotiate their roles, resist when necessary, and at times, even benefit from overseas labor migration.