Trapped in Threads: Multifaceted Precarity of Migrant Workers in Cambodia’s Garment Industry

This study examines the multifaceted precarity experienced by migrant workers in Cambodia’s garment industry, a sector dominated by Chinese investment and crucial to Cambodia’s economic development. Drawing on secondary data, qualitative interviews, and questionnaire surveys, we analyze how uneven development and power imbalance in global production shape the living and working conditions of Cambodian garment workers. The research highlights the complex interplay between Chinese foreign direct investment, Cambodia’s institutional environment, and the garment industry’s global production network dynamics. We argue that migrant workers face overlapping forms of precariousness that extend beyond economic instability, affecting multiple aspects of their lives. This precarity is exacerbated by subsistence-level wages, short employment contracts, job suspensions, rural-urban migration patterns, remittances and debts, and the workers’ position within the global production network. By linking individual experiences to broader structural forces, this study contributes to a nuanced understanding of labor conditions in the context of increasing Chinese investment in the Global South and the ongoing transformation of global production dynamics.