Abstract
Production politics between Bangladeshi construction workers and their employers tend to take the form of tactical accommodation. Workers tactically use obedience to work superiors in order to avoid open conflict while siphoning better rewards. This is in spite of enduring worker grievances over poor working conditions. It is the specific manner in which migrant worker powerlessness and migration objectives intersect with and within the dynamics of control—that is, the process by which employers set their workers to work—that explains how obedience as a tactic arises out of these material circumstances. Consequently, opportunities for worker confrontation are foreclosed while the relative autonomy of workplace controls tends to open up opportunities for informal negotiations.
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Bal, C.S. (2016). Constituting Tactical Obedience in the Workplace. In: Production Politics and Migrant Labour Regimes. Critical Studies of the Asia-Pacific. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54859-7_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54859-7_4
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