Conference Agenda

While migrant-sending countries in Southeast Asia are struggling to facilitate and protect their citizens working as precarious labourers abroad, only a few of these countries showed some success. Scholars have explained such failures which point to structural challenges in three interrelated aspects: (1) differences in the state jurisdiction (Ball & Piper, 2002); (2) commercialization of migration facilitation (Lindquist, Xiang, & Yeoh, 2012; Xiang, 2013); and (3) weak migration management (Piper & Foley, 2021). This research will challenge the above argument by contending that despite such structural challenges, an intersubjectivity between governments and workers may trigger the creation of a critical infrastructure of social protection for overseas labourers.

Drawing from the case study of labour migration between Indonesia and Malaysia, this research seeks to explore the government-to-people intersubjective process that emerged between the Indonesian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur and Indonesian worker communities/associations in Malaysia. With an estimate of more than a million Indonesian citizens residing in Malaysia – similar to the population of one large municipal administration in Indonesia – the Indonesian government handles complex migrant labour issues. This paper argues that the intersubjective process between the Indonesian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur and Indonesian migrant workers has co-produced a mutual awareness that is useful in creating a cooperation mechanism for social protection. This cooperation is not only useful in mitigating the impact of the global crisis on migrant workers such as the Covid-19 Pandemic, but also in managing the day-to-day lives of precarious labourers. This cooperation mechanism has also offered an inclusive way to handle labour issues beyond the ‘migration management’ approach.

This paper is written based on a series of fieldwork conducted between 2015 and 2020 in Malaysia and Indonesia, as part of a PhD research. The paper has relied on ethnographic information, field notes, and in-depth interviews with both government officials and migrant worker association leaders in Indonesia and Malaysia. The paper will start by reviewing some of the problems faced by Indonesian labourers in Malaysia and highlighting how the Indonesian government responded to those. Then it turns to discuss the intersubjective process between the Indonesian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur and migrant workers that took place during the fieldwork period, which triggered the creation of a government-to-people cooperation mechanism.

Introduction: Social protection as a form of labour regulation is heavily contested terrain which is intrinsically linked to the question of how to expand coverage to workers in the informal economy. Dominant responses to the debate have generally proceeded in two directions. On the one hand, a push towards establishing formal employment relationships which underpin labour law, and which form the basis for the expansion of work-related social protection through employer and employee contributions. On the other hand, a push away from social protection as a form of labour regulation and towards a service funded by the state and/or individuals. Both perspectives have their blindspots; the former not fully addressing the question of who is to contribute on behalf of self-employed informal workers who make up 64% of all informal workers, and the latter relying on questionable assumptions about the capacity of governments to raise consumption taxes in order to finance adequate levels of protection. The impact of delinking social protection from labor regulation on bargaining, conditions and pay is also unclear.

The creative strategies used by organizations of workers in the informal economy to engage with the regulatory environment both within and outside of labour regulation to improve working conditions and resources for the expansion of social and labour protections. We focus on this neglected area of work, highlighting the work of organizations forging an alternative path for the regulation of work beyond both the state and the employer-employee relationship.

Research Questions: How are organizations of informal workers, particularly the self-employed, engaging with the regulatory environment to develop alternative forms of work-related social protection and increase financing for social protection? Outside of labour regulation, where are the possibilities for such workers to make gains? What are the wider lessons for the regulation of work that can be learned from these attempts?

Methods: The paper is based on a series of case studies, based on primary and secondary qualitative research conducted with and through organizations of workers in the informal economy in India and Argentina.

Findings: The case studies highlight the innovative thinking particularly in the waste picking sector around the use of environmental legislation, relationships with municipalities, value chains, as well as India’s Workers Welfare Boards. While many of these examples are nascent, or under threat, they present important examples to expand understanding of the possibilities for supportive regulation in labour markets dominated by self-employment and informality.

The Philippines persistently suffers from a high incidence of severe poverty with about 20 million Filipinos living below the monthly national poverty threshold. Poverty is primarily a problem of lack of income which is largely tied up to the high levels of both unemployment and underemployment in the Philippines that jointly adds up to more than 9 million Filipino labor force for the past two decades, and the pervasive informal sector employment numbering close to 17 million workers in 2021. Street vending is the most visible manifestation of informal sector employment and is a vibrant and ubiquitous phenomenon in large cities such as Metro Manila. The Philippine national government adheres to the target of eradicating extreme poverty by 2030 consistent with upholding the constitutional right of every Filipino to life, liberty, and property which includes the “right to choose one’s employment, the right to labor and the right of locomotion”. In contrast, the use of police power to enforce the Metro Manila Council resolutions and ordinances that severely restrict street vending have transgressed the rights of street vendors by subjecting them to physical harm, and confiscation and destruction of their merchandise and vending equipment. Amidst persistently severe decent work deficits indicated by very high levels of unemployment and underemployment, street vending may be the only viable recourse for many of the poorest Filipinos to survive and provide for their families, rendering anti-street vending ordinances as criminalizing the state of penury. The paper examines the Metro Manila Council resolutions on street vending and the practice of police power, and how these conflict with national policies for poverty alleviation and the constitutional rights of street vendors to life, liberty, and property. The paper argues for the decriminalization of street vending and recommends more sustainable alternative programs for street vendors.