Precarious Rights

This book examines how migrant workers' everyday experiences are being shaped by precarious conditions in the receiving countries. With a mixed methods approach, the case studies of migrant workers in Thailand and Thai migrant workers in Taiwan, South Korea and the USA from 2005-2020 are analyzed to compare the strategies used toward justice in various contexts such as labor, permanent residency, and human rights. Revealing the limitations for true economic and social integration, the author argues that precarious conditions and exclusion from legal protections are the forces that limit noncitizens’ access to remedies against wage theft, labor trafficking, forced labor and related human rights violations. NGOs advocating alongside Southeast Asian migrant workers therefore exemplify how transnational labor rights are negotiated to increase state social protections for foreign nationals abroad who work in ‘dirty, dangerous, and degrading’ jobs. Advancing the growing literature on labor migration and precarities in South East Asia and the USA, the author combines labor and anti-trafficking theories with practices utilized by NGO and trade unions to participate in setting the agenda of this interdisciplinary field of migrant precarity. The implications are therefore not just of interest to scholars of migration from and in Asia but appeals to international practitioners in trade unions and policy makers as well.