Defending Labour and Land. Challenges in Finding Common Ground in Cambodia.

Alliances between trade unions and other social movements would be essential to resist neoliberal hegemony and oppose policies that prioritize the needs of corporations over the well-being of citizens. This paper contributes to the discussion about these alliances by examining the case of Cambodian civil society, where joint mobilization between trade unions, social movements and the political opposition in the aftermath of the 2013 national elections brought unprecedented gains to workers. However, this alliance was unique and short-lived, which is what the paper aims at understanding, drawing attention to the compartmentalized understandings of land grabs and labour rights violation, as aspects of neoliberalism .

Based on interviews conducted during 13 months of ethnographically oriented fieldwork in Cambodia, the paper focuses on the relationship between labour and land rights movements, pointing to the importance of understanding labour struggles as political. Social movement unionism has been largely absent in Cambodia, and for the most part, unions are characterized by industry-focus and male-bias. The paper points to the authoritarian political context, but also to certain tendencies of labour’s international allies, in contributing to this situation. The focus of labour strategies has shifted outside the country, to international buyers, which contributes to a separate understanding of the forces behind land grabs and violations of labour rights in garment factories. Similar tendencies of compartmentalized understandings are also present at the global level, between labour and environmentalist advocacy groups. While the business and human rights agenda might provide a platform for bringing together movements that defend workers and natural resources against the interests of multinational companies, wide political framing of the problems is central.