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Living from hand to mouth : lived experiences of construction workers in Myanmar

Swe, Yee Yee
Doctoral thesis
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URI
http://hdl.handle.net/11250/282447
Date
2015
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  • Fakultet for samfunns- og utdanningsvitenskap (uspesifisert) [156]
Abstract
Since the 1990s, Myanmar has significantly changed as several economic

reforms have begun to open the country’s market to international

investments. Along with globalisation, rural–urban dynamics have become

stronger through the growing labour force participation of rural persons in

urban wage work. New construction activities in cities have been a major

source of employment for many poor people. However, the majority of

Myanmar people continue to live in deep poverty, and the livelihood of

construction workers who have contributed to economic growth through

their labour remains behind the scenes. In this regard, this study aims to

document the lived experiences of construction workers through a

quantitative and qualitative empirical investigation, to enable their realities

to be acknowledged.

Based on four periods of fieldwork from 2002 to 2013, this thesis

analyses how individual workers became construction workers, their

experiences of being construction workers, and their prospects for building

sustainable livelihoods. In this study, construction work is considered a

source of livelihood rather than employment, which refers only to paid jobs

and does not include social or cultural aspects. The scope of the study was

limited to masonry work in building construction, in which both men and

women work in Myanmar, in order for gender perspective to be included in

the research. The analytical approach to understand lived experiences of

construction workers was based on the interactive relationships between

global-local context, livelihood and people’s agency, which were

investigated through an intersectionality perspective.

The study reveals that the majority of the construction workers were

rural migrants, because entry into the sector was relatively easy. The process

of informalisation through subcontracting work marginalised the workers,

and the predominance of dependent consciousness among them may have

been the result of the circumstances in which they had to work in order to

survive. The increasingly repressive character of their livelihood contexts is

revealed in connection with formal institutions (which provided neither

basic social benefits nor law reinforcement services) and informal

institutions (such as culture and social practices), as well as workers’ limited

experiences with organised forms of resistance and their lack of an efficient

civil society.

Here, I demonstrate that construction work was not only a livelihood

strategy, but also an asset accumulation strategy. However, construction

work never uplifted the workers from poverty, as they earned only enough

to cover their cost of food, and employment was irregular. Furthermore,

workers were prone to unemployment, sickness and accidental injury at

work due to a lack of workplace safety measures. As their accumulated

assets were not sufficient to cover the costs of accidents or poor health, cycles of indebtedness often contributed to their poverty. In such situations,

social networks were particularly important for the workers’ daily survival

and crisis management.

Including skilled workers, the majority of the construction workers

felt that the work attributed them with low social status. The workers

described their lives as let-hloat-let-sa (‘hand to mouth’). Furthermore, the

marital and extramarital relationships among workers, the migratory nature

of the work and workers’ migrant status in the city made their social context

vulnerable. It was common for female construction workers to experience

sexual harassment by male co-workers. Women also suffered because the

indigenous concept of hpoun prohibited them from certain tasks at work,

such as working above men. As a result, women were paid less than men,

and only employed as unskilled workers – even if they could do skilled

tasks. However, through the forces of globalisation, some women were able

to become skilled workers.

Workers’ routes to sustainable livelihoods commonly involved

learning skills in order to become self-employed construction entrepreneurs.

However, access to skill development and training involved complex power

relations. In particular, the paternalistic relationship between construction

workers and their employers, the power hierarchy determined by the

positions individuals occupied in an organisation, the disciplinary power

exerted through regulations and routine, and the workers’ agency power

through righteous indignation (ma-khan-chin-sate) and self-discipline were

the most essential elements in relation to workers’ desired livelihood

outcomes. Methodologically, the intersectionality perspective helped to

elucidate how the lived experiences of individual construction workers, in

relation to their intersecting identities, varied.

The study concludes that the poverty of construction workers will

remain in the years to come, and that there cannot be a way out of poverty

that does not entail better working conditions and basic social security

services. The study also argues that there is an urgent need to improve the

gender gap in the working conditions of Myanmar women. By

demonstrating how the poor achieve a livelihood based on masonry

construction, the study provides a new impetus to the debate over smallscale

enterprise in the informal sector and the role of small-scale enterprises

in minimising poverty in Myanmar.
Publisher
NTNU
Series
Doctoral thesis at NTNU;2015:5

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