My previous post highlights the protests of garment workers in Bangladesh, as a result of extremely low wages. Through the study, I have argued for the need to complicate the mainstream and traditional conception of security to one that includes the stories and narratives from the below; that is, the embedded individuals, which in this case are the labourers, their positionality in the global sphere and the associated problems. I have attempted to do so with the help of postcolonial and feminist theories as analytical tools.
For this essay, I will be looking at the case of workers’ abuse in the H&M factories in Myanmar. I maintain that International Relations and Security Studies as disciplines could do with more research and studies that explore the accounts of the working class from urban and rural factories and/or corporate centres. This would provide a valuable insight into understanding the current order of neoliberalism and free-market capitalism from the perspectives of the people most affected by it.
Through this essay, I would be analysing the discourse around security in the context of labour and workers’ abuse in H&M factories, especially in Myanmar. H&M is a Swedish multinational corporation who is known for producing garments and spearheading the current fast fashion industry. Despite their highly successful business venture and large and elite consumer base, the corporation has received continuous allegations and associated criticisms regarding exploitation and human rights abuse of their supply factory workers.
Source: The Japan Times
The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRCC), with their thorough investigation and report, exposed the abuse of workers in the garment industries in Myanmar, including yet not limited to inhumane working conditions, wage theft along with forced overtime, gender-based harassment of the workers, as well as an attack on civil liberties and freedom of association (Falling out of fashion, 2023). The report called out the corporate brands that source their materials from Myanmar, H&M being a major one, demanding adherence to a heightened requirements of human rights due diligence, else to end sourcing from Myanmar.
Following the report, H&M announced it would conduct its own investigation of 20 alleged cases of labour abuse, before finally announcing its plan to slowly ‘phase out’ from their operations in Myanmar, acknowledging its failure to meet the required standards of factory operation and manufacturing (Reid, 2023). This reflects a case where modern capitalist enterprises and corporate entities were compelled to reconsider their operations and power vis a vis their workers, something that was stimulated by civil society and non-profit actors.
Through this study, I will be continuing my attempt from the previous blog post to understand security along with its theorisations and implications, from the accounts of the embedded individuals, specifically, the urban working class in a neoliberal market setting. Turning to the studies of political theorist Achille Mbembe, I would argue that the manner in which the modern capitalist regime operates could be understood in terms of necropolitics, that is, the politics of death.
Drawing upon the histories of imperialism as well as totalitarian state systems, Mbembe theorises the way in which modern institutions of power and sovereignty work, which is through the creation of subjects and subjectivities that blurs the line between life and death.
Mbembe furthers, while simultaneously critiquing the idea of biopower, as formulated by the French philosopher Michel Foucault. According to Foucault, biopower is worked upon the subjects of the modern state, which is supposedly the power to sustain life. This conceptualisation of biopower envisages a state of exception (coined by Giorgio Agamben), where the sovereign, that is, entity that exercises the ultimate power, is able to suspend its rules and norms that sustains life, thereby leaving the subjects in a place of distress and vulnerability reminiscent of death. (Mbembe 2003, 16)
On the contrary, Mbembe argues that in these modern systems, humans are made into subjects through their confrontation with death (Mbembe 2003, 14). Here, there is no such state of exception, because the state of exception becomes the norm. Taking examples of slavery, colonialism, African apartheid, the camp systems, and the Palestinian situation, Mbembe argues that violence and marginalisation is embedded in the way the governance structure operates in this arena, where the subjects are made into bare lives that are politically invaluable, essentially giving them the status of the ‘living-dead’ (Mbembe 2003, 40).
Source: Wikimedia commons
This conceptualisation of Mbembe is relevant to the current case study of late-stage capitalism as well. As understood through this study, the extremely exploitative and violent working conditions experienced by the workers, wherein they were denied any form of agency is evocative of his theorisation. The corporate entity, H&M in this case, because of all the power and resources at its disposal, is able to act as a sovereign entity that is able to reduce their workers into a form of subjecthood that could be exploited and capitalised on.
It is through the interference of the civil society actors and other bodies that the power of the corporate was questioned and revised, pushing them to phase out from such operations in the said territory. Furthermore, I would like to bring in the works of another theorist of security, that is Ole Waever. Waever, in his works on security and securitisation, talks about security to be a speech act by the state actor, which allows the state the power over the said situation. (Waever, 1995)
However, in this case, the state in question is complicit in the workings and operations of the threat object. It was since the military coup in February 2021 that the workers abuse in the factories is said to have increased. Here, identifying the security issue regarding the treatment of the factory workers came from the non-state forces, which was able to prompt the large corporates to take action.
Source: The Daily Sabah
This instance then complicates the idea of securitisation as proposed by Waever, considering the role played by the state. In conclusion, through the study of H&M and their operations in Myanmar, one is able to identify security from with the referent workers and their subjectivity at the centre, while analysing the role of the corporate entity as a form of sovereign power. The role of the state here, albeit being a military regime, is rather limited, which allows for the said capitalist actor to take precedence as bodies that contain power and force within.
References
“Falling out of fashion: Garment worker abuse under military rule in Myanmar.” Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, August 16, 2023. https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/from-us/briefings/falling-out-of-fashion-garment-worker-abuse-under-military-rule-in-myanmar/
“H&M says it will 'phase out' sourcing from Myanmar.” The Economic Times, August 17, 2023. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/hm-says-it-will-phase-out-sourcing-from-myanmar/articleshow/102810010.cms
Mbembe, Achille. “Necropolitics.” Public culture 15, no. 1 (2003): 11-40.
Reid, Hannah. “H&M says it will 'phase out' sourcing from Myanmar”. Reuters, August 17, 2023. https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/hm-says-it-will-phase-out-sourcing-myanmar-2023-08-17/
Weaver, Ole. “Securitization and Desecuritization.” On Security, edited by Ronnie Lipschutz. New York: Columbia University Press. https://www.libraryofsocialscience.com/assets/pdf/Waever-Securitization.pdf
Very insightful post! Interesting take on Mbembe’s theorisation and how the state of exception becomes the norm here. Your case study really does bring out how we often tend to overlook that violence - whether it is physical or structural - is inherently embedded within a power structure. Challenging Weaver’s conception of securitization, contextualizing it within the neocolonial tendency of the MNC, and the role of the state in perpetuating the same really stood out to me. However, do you think a counter to Weaver using Hansen Lee’s theorization of speech act would have been possible? Or do you think such a conceptualization takes away the agency of the workers?