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‘Worn out’: debt discipline, hunger, and the gendered contingencies of the COVID-19 pandemic amongst Cambodian garment workers

Brickell, Katherine; Lawreniuk, Sabina; Chhom, Theavy; Mony, Reach; So, Hengvotey; McCarthy, Lauren

‘Worn out’: debt discipline, hunger, and the gendered contingencies of the COVID-19 pandemic amongst Cambodian garment workers Thumbnail


Authors

Katherine Brickell

Theavy Chhom

Reach Mony

Hengvotey So

Lauren McCarthy



Abstract

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.

Citation

Brickell, K., Lawreniuk, S., Chhom, T., Mony, R., So, H., & McCarthy, L. (2023). ‘Worn out’: debt discipline, hunger, and the gendered contingencies of the COVID-19 pandemic amongst Cambodian garment workers. Social and Cultural Geography, 24(3-4), 600-619. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2022.2055778

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Nov 18, 2021
Online Publication Date Apr 6, 2022
Publication Date 2023
Deposit Date May 9, 2022
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Social and Cultural Geography
Print ISSN 1464-9365
Electronic ISSN 1470-1197
Publisher Informa UK Limited
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 24
Issue 3-4
Pages 600-619
DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2022.2055778
Keywords Geography, Planning and Development; Cultural Studies
Public URL https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/8041898
Publisher URL https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14649365.2022.2055778

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