Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-788cddb947-nxk7g Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-09T17:41:21.063Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Bodies at Work: Gendered Performance and Migrant Beer Sellers in Southeast Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2021

Get access

Summary

Abstract

Migrant beer sellers in Bangkok, Phnom Penh, and Vientiane engage in multiple contestations over bodily inscriptions, mobilizations, subjectivities, boundaries, and agency. Their bodies are subject to and shaped by the male gaze of recruitment agents, employers, and customers who can influence beer sellers’ incomes through the power they have to hire and place migrant workers in more or less popular venues, to control their movements and interactions with clients, and, to offer the prospects of patronage. Male customers often challenge bodily boundaries and integrity through unwanted touching, coercive sexual encounters, and encouraged co-drinking while, outside work, their social presentation is often judged as scandalous. These interactions work to shape and to reinforce the hegemonic gendered, racialized, and classed social order.

Keywords: migrant beer sellers, male gaze, recruitment agents, patronage>

Introduction

Migrant beer sellers are counted among the thousands of young women in Southeast Asia who are encouraged to move to urban centres for work or education and who are potentially excited by the possibilities of adopting an imagined ‘modern’ urban lifestyle. Notably, working as a beer seller is considered more lucrative and less demanding than factory labour (Phouxay and Tollesfsen 2011) and is often sufficiently flexible to combine with post-secondary studies even as workers contend with the stigmatization associated with an occupation that is formally or informally categorized as (indirect) sex work.

In this chapter, I draw upon a participatory mixed-methods study, Intersections of Gender, Work, and Health: Migrant Beer Sellers in Southeast Asia, conducted with migrant beer sellers in Bangkok (Thailand), Phnom Penh (Cambodia), and Vientiane (Laos). The project included a scan of our state of knowledge of beer selling in the three focal cities and primary data collection that featured focus groups and in-depth interviews with 90 beer sellers, surveys from a total of 946 workers from different venue types in each city, and 70 hours of observation. Drawing from these data and focusing on the body, I highlight how complex and shifting global, regional, and local interactions contour the lives of migrant beer sellers.

Context

Despite their historical, social, and political particularities, the countries of Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos have all been impacted by and are implicated in contemporary neoliberal globalization that propelled the expansion of export-oriented manufacturing in the region beginning with Thailand in the 1970s (Esara 2004) and eventually spreading to Laos in the mid-1980s (Khamphouvong and Santasombat 2014).

Type
Chapter
Information
The Asian Migrant's Body
Emotion, Gender and Sexuality
, pp. 53 - 68
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×