| dc.description.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. | nb_NO |
