Labour in the Clothing Industry in the Asia Pacific

This edited book presents carefully researched case studies and analyses the ways labour is informalized, fragmented and made disposable by the globalization of production. Offering new insights into the understanding and support of workers in the global textile and garment industry, this book will be of interest to academics of a variety of disciplines including Asian Studies, sociology, political economy, development, human rights, labor and gender.

Dr Vicki Crinis is Associate Researcher with the Law, Humanities and Creative Arts Faculty at the University of Wollongong, where she previously held a Postdoctoral Fellowship as part of an Australian Research Council Discovery Project on the garment industry in the Asia-Pacific. Her research focuses on the global clothing industry, trade unions and migrant workers in Malaysia, and she has published some book chapters and journal articles on female labour, sweatshops in the clothing industry, NGOs and trade unions, CSR labour rights and human rights. Professor Adrian Vickers holds a personal chair at the University of Sydney, and researches and publishes on the cultural history of Southeast Asia. He has held a series of ARC grants, the most recent looking at Indonesian art, the Cold War, and labour and industry in Southeast Asia. As part of a linkage grant on the history of Balinese painting, he has created a virtual museum, continuing previous pioneering work in eResearch and teaching. His books include the highly popular Bali: A Paradise Created (new edition 2012), A History of Modern Indonesia (new edition 2013) and Balinese Art: Paintings and Drawings of Bali, 1800-2010 (2012). Professor Vickers has recently been a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Asia Research Institute, the National University of Singapore, a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Joint Centre for History and Economics at the University of Cambridge, and a Visiting Fellow at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

1. Introduction: Dis-organizing Labour in the Clothing Industry in the Asia Pacific 2. The Fragmentation of the Clothing and Textile Trade Union Movement in Malaysia 3. Scrutinizing the Effectiveness of Trade Unions in Post-socialist Vietnam 4. Before Rana Plaza: Toward a History of labour Organizing in Bangladesh's Garment Industry 5. Migrant Workers in the Clothing Industry: Networking in Christian Spaces 6. China's Migrant Workers and the Global Financial Crisis 7. Workers in the Indian Export Garment Industry: Surviving Neoliberal Reforms 8. Child Labour and Gender Discrimination in the Garment Industry of Kong Pisei, Cambodia 9. Asian Women Doing Home-based Garment Manufacturing in Sydney, Australia, Appendix