This book reviews employment conditions in Asian countries. This is the hub of the strongest growth area in the world economy and while attention has focussed on job growth and industrial transformation, there has been very little attention on employment characteristics and employment conditions. In particular, the book addresses the issue of whether globalisation, taken to mean the growing international integration of economies, is a factor that leads to a convergence of employment conditions, and more importantly, an improvement in employment conditions. The book brings together contributions on many Asian economies where these core questions are considered at both the macro level and for specified industries. - Addresses fundamental questions regarding growth, globalisation and working conditions - Includes analysis of West, East and North Asian countries - Includes an overview chapter from researchers from the ILO

In the past two decades, several millions of IT-enabled services jobs have been relocated or ‘offshored’ from the US and Europe to, in particular, low cost economies around the world. Most of these jobs so far have landed in South and South-East Asia, with India and the Philippines receiving the bulk of them. This has caused profound changes in the international division of labour, and has had correspondingly wide social and economic effects. This book examines how this ‘next wave in globalization’ affects people and places in South and South-East Asia. It brings together twelve case studies from India, the Philippines, China, Hong Kong and Thailand, and explores how and for whom services offshoring creates opportunities, triggers local economic transformations and produces challenges. This book in addition compares how different countries take part in this ‘second global shift’, investigates service-sector driven economic development from a historical perspective, and engages with the question whether and to what extent services offer a new promising avenue of sustained economic growth for developing countries. It argues that service-led development in developing countries is not easy for all the workers involved, or a guaranteed path to sustained economic development and prosperity. This volume stands out from other books in the field in its exploration of the social and economic outcomes in the cities and countries where services have been located. Based on cutting edge empirical research and original data, the volume offers a state-of-the-art contribution to this growing debate. The book provides valuable insights for students, scholars and professionals interested in services offshoring, socio-economic development and contemporary transformations in South and South-East Asia.

This volume documents the ways in which Asian governments have been pursuing economic nationalism. It challenges the view that globalization renders the state redundant and demonstrates how they shape trade, investment and financial outcomes. Countries covered include India, China, South Korea, Singapore, Japan and the East Asian region.

This book examines performative interventions that can generate a re-imagining of local publics -- both spatially grounded and mediatized -- and help to renegotiate the connection between the local and the global.

""Brings together a set of studies of labour conditions in GVCs - in labour-intensive sectors, medium- and high-technology sectors and knowledge-intensive sectors"--Provided by publisher"--

The rapid postwar economic growth in the Southeast Asia region has led to a transformation of many of the societies there, together with the development of new types of anthropological research in the region. Local societies with originally quite different cultures have been incorporated into multi-ethnic states with their own projects of nation-building based on the creation of "national cultures" using these indigenous elements. At the same time, the expansion of international capitalism has led to increasing flows of money, people, languages and cultures across national boundaries, resulting in new hybrid social structures and cultural forms. This book examines the nature of these processes in contemporary Southeast Asia with detailed case studies drawn from countries across the region, including Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. At the macro-level these include studies of nation-building and the incorporation of minorities. At the micro-level they range from studies of popular cultural forms, such as music and textiles to the impact of new sects and the world religions on local religious practice. Moving between the global and the local are the various streams of migrants within the region, including labor migrants responding to the changing distribution of economic opportunities and ethnic minorities moving in response to natural disaster.