The political economy of local labor control in the Philippines

Labor market processes in sites of peripheral capitalism are all too freque ntly represented as the straightforward exploitation df abundant, cheap, an d place-hound labor by space-controlling international capital. Extensive l iteratures exist that deal with national regimes of labor regulation and th e subjugated subjectivities of workers in locations of rapid industrializat ion in the developing world. The complex regulating institutions operating at a local scale in such sites have not, however, received the same sensiti ve attention as labor markets in the industrialized world, on which researc h has advanced considerably in recent years. In this paper I seek to address that discrepancy by focusing on the institu tions and actors involved in creating a local labor control regime in a sit e of rapid industrialization in the Philippines. These include the national state, corporate investors, individual workers, industrial estate manageme nt companies, recruitment agencies, village and community leaders, municipa l officials, provincial governments, and labor organizations. In exploring the relationship between these various players I develop two arguments. Fir st, the relationship embodied in the labor process of newly industrializing spaces cannot be conceived simply as an antagonism between "global" capita l and "local" labor. Instead, the wide range of local players described her e act to mediate that relationship and to embed specific global capitals in a local political economy of power relations. Second, these localized rela tionships often exist outside of formal regulatory institutions, and indeed may directly contravene them. In this way the mechanisms employed in the l ocal labor control regime are frequently more informal, more fluid, and mor e geographically variable than an analysis of formal regulatory institution s would reveal.