Worn out

Debt discipline, hunger, and the gendered contingencies of the Covid-19 pandemic amongst Cambodian garment workers

Bibliographic Data

ID3978170
AuthorsKatherine Brickell (0000-0002-0638-6106, University of London, corresponding author), Sabina Lawreniuk (0000-0002-7165-9481, School of Geography, University of Nottingham, University Park, Nottingham, UK), Theavy Chhom (Cambodia Development Resource Institute (CDRI), Phnom Penh, Cambodia), Reach Mony (Cambodia Development Resource Institute (CDRI), Phnom Penh, Cambodia), Hengvotey So (Cambodia Development Resource Institute (CDRI), Phnom Penh, Cambodia), Lisa Mccarthy (0000-0001-6299-4651, School of Business and Management, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey, UK), Lauren Mccarthy
Year2023
Volume24
Issue3-4
Pages600-619
Publication date2023-03-16
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial & Cultural Geography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1464-9365 • E-ISSN: 1470-1197
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14649365.2022.2055778
OpenAlexW4224296220
LanguageEN
Citations received24
References cited49

Drawing on 203 quantitative surveys with women workers in Cambodia and a further set of semi-structured interviews with 60 original participants, this paper is one of the very first to present empirically grounded research from garment workers on the financial challenges of navigating the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. We show how in the making of clothes to be worn by Western consumers, poorly paid garment workers are reducing their eating to repay long-term debts and those newly taken on to cope with wage reductions resulting from factory closures, suspensions, and cuts in working hours. In its examination of this phenomenon, the paper improves understanding of the gendered contingencies of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ‘wearing out’ of garment workers through their attempts to reproduce life under (pre-existing) conditions of privation. We argue that the debt-hunger nexus is not new but reflects problems within Cambodia’s capitalist development, and capitalism itself, as the costs of social reproduction and risk are privatised and financialised in the body politic. The COVID-19 pandemic is consolidating relations with financialised life such that they will outlast its duration and have long-lasting implications for workers and their families globally

2019-20 coronavirus outbreak · Business · Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19 · Debt · Pandemic · Political science · Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2 · Sociology · Cambodian History and Society · Gender Studies · Medicine · Virology

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