Climate Change in the Global Workplace: Labour, Adaptation and Resistance

223 Pages·2021·2.1 MB·English

by  Nithya Natarajan, Laurie Parsons

Climate Change in the Global
Workplace
This book offers a timely exploration of how climate change manifests in the
global workplace. It draws together accounts of workers, their work, and the
politics of resistance in order to enable us to better understand how the impacts
of climate change are structured by the economic and social processes of labour.
Focusing on nine empirically grounded cases of labour under climate change,
this volume links the tools and methods of critical labour studies to key debates
over climate change adaptation and mitigation in order to highlight the active
nature of struggles in the climate-impacted workplace. Spanning cases including
commercial agriculture in Turkey, labour unions in the UK, and brick kilns in
Cambodia, this collection offers a novel lens on the changing climate, showing
how both the impacts of climate change and human adaptations to it emerge
through the prism of working lives.
Drawing together scholars from anthropology, political economy, geography,
and development studies, this book will be of great interest to students and
scholars of climate change adaptation, labour studies, and environmental
justice. More generally, it will be of interest to anybody seeking to understand
how the changing climate is changing the terms, conditions, and politics of the
global workplace.
Nithya Natarajan is Lecturer in international development at King’s College,
London. Her work focuses on South India and Cambodia, and explores
agrarian change, rural-urban livelihoods, labour precarity, gender, and debt.
Laurie Parsons is Lecturer in human geography at Royal Holloway, University
of London. His work examines the contested politics of climate change on
socio-economic inequalities, patterns of work, and mobilities.
Routledge Advances in Climate Change Research
Political Responsibility for Climate Change
Ethical Institutions and Fact-Sensitive Theory
Theresa Scavenius
Insuring Against Climate Change
The Emergence of Regional Catastrophe Risk Pools
Nikolas Scherer
Climate Justice and Community Renewal
Resistance and Grassroots Solutions
Edited by Brian Tokar and Tamra Gilbertson
Teaching Climate Change in the United States
Edited by Joseph Henderson and Andrea Drewes
Climate Change Law in China in Global Context
Edited by Xiangbai He, Hao Zhang, and Alexander Zahar
The Ethos of the Climate Event
Ethical Transformations and Political Subjectivities
Kellan Anfinson
Perceptions of Climate Change from North India
An Ethnographic Account
Aase J. Kvanneid
Climate Change in the Global Workplace
Labour, Adaptation, and Resistance
Edited by Nithya Natarajan and Laurie Parsons
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
Routledge-Advances-in-Climate-Change-Research/book-series/RACCR
Climate Change in the Global
Workplace
Labour, Adaptation, and Resistance
Edited by Nithya Natarajan and
Laurie Parsons
First published 2021
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 selection and editorial matter, Nithya Natarajan and Laurie Parsons;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Nithya Natarajan and Laurie Parsons to be identified as the
authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-42232-5 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-76232-2 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-82290-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
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Contents
List of figures vii
List of tables viii
Contributor bios ix
Foreword xiv
ANDREW HEROD
Acknowledgements xviii
1 Introduction: climate change in the global
workplace: labour, adaptation, and resistance 1
NITHYA NATARAJAN AND LAURIE PARSONS
PART 1
Labour 13
2 Thermal inequality in a changing climate:
heat, mobility, and precarity in the Cambodian
brick sector 15
LAURIE PARSONS
3 Climate change adaptation through agroecology
in Senegal: enhanced farmworkers’ autonomy or
new forms of vertical labour control? 32
PATRICK BOTTAZZI, SÉBASTIEN BOILLAT, FRANZISKA MARFURT,
AND SOKHNA MBOSSÉ SECK
4 Routes to food security: strategies of survival
of marginalised communities in North-western
Bangladesh 49
TANEESHA MOHAN
vi Contents
PART 2
Adaptation 71
5 Old ways and new routes: climate threats and
adaptive possibilities in the Indian Himalayas 73
RICHARD AXELBY AND MAURA BULGHERONI
6 From climate adaptation to social reproductive
resistance: examining the gendered climate-labour
migration nexus in Southeast Asian mobilisations for
environmental justice 93
SYMON JAMES-WILSON
7 Hands that adapt: seasonal labour migration, climate
change, and the making of adaptable subjects
in Turkey 110
ETHEMCAN TURHAN
PART 3
Resistance 129
8 Workers and environmentalists of the world unite?
Exploring red-green politics in union support for
Heathrow expansion 131
MAYA GOODFELLOW AND NITHYA NATARAJAN
9 A changing climate: indigenous participation in the
extractive industry 152
KIMBERLEIGH SCHULTZ
10 Climate change is class war: global labour’s challenge
to the Capitalocene 172
SABINA LAWRENIUK
11 Conclusion: towards a reworking of climate
adaptation as labour “resistance” 189
LAURIE PARSONS AND NITHYA NATARAJAN
Index 196
Figures
1.1 Global gross domestic product (US$), 1960–2019 4
2.1 Urban-rural remittances by occupation (N = 308) 26
4.1 Location map of study site, Khansama, Bangladesh 52
4.2 Mean Likert scale response scores for the HRG and LRG,
Khansama region 57
4.3 Disaster resilience map: LRGs, women, Musahar Para 65
4.4 Disaster resilience map: LRGs, women, Okhrabari 66
5.1 Routes of Gaddi shepherds in Chamba, Kangra, and
Kullu Bharmour 76
7.1 Poster of Adana Agricultural Workers’ Convention in 2005 121
8.1 British trade union membership rates, 1892–2017 133
8.2 UK trade union membership compared with employment,
1971–2017 134
8.3 UK trade union membership by region, 1995–2019 140
8.4 English trade union membership by region, 1995–2019 141
8.5 Proportion of UK union members by age, 2019 145
8.6 UK labour market by age, 1992–2019 146
9.1 “Delineating northern and southern Canada” 155
Tables
2.1 Percentage perceiving climate change impacts (N = 308) 20
4.1 Focus group discussions in Khansama, Dinajpur 53
4.2 Socio-demographic distribution in Khansama, Dinajpur 54
4.3 Disturbance scenarios 64
Contributor bios
Nithya Natarajan, Lecturer in international development, Department
of International Development, King’s College London
Dr Nithya Natarajan is Lecturer in international development at King’s College,
London. Her work focuses on South India and Cambodia, and explores
agrarian change, rural-urban livelihoods, labour precarity, gender, and debt.
She completed an ESRC-funded PhD at SOAS, University of London, and
a postdoctoral research position at Royal Holloway as part of the ESRC-
DfID-funded “Blood Bricks” research project. Nithya is currently a co-
investigator on the GCRF-funded project “Depleted by debt? Focusing a
gendered lens on climate, credit and nutrition in translocal Cambodia and
South India”. Her work features in a range of journal articles, book chapters,
and edited volumes. She has also engaged with policy and activist outputs in
disseminating her research, notably in Open Democracy, through a Home
Affairs Select Committee submission regarding the UK Modern Slavery Act.
Laurie Parsons, Lecturer in human geography, Royal Holloway,
University of London
Laurie Parsons is Lecturer in human geography at Royal Holloway, University of
London. His work examines the contested politics of climate change on socio-
economic inequalities, patterns of work, and mobilities. Strongly committed
to policy engagement, Laurie has conducted large-scale projects examining
inequalities in Cambodia’s economic development for Transparency Interna-
tional, Plan International, Save the Children, CARE International, Action-
Aid, the IDRC, and the Royal University of Phnom Penh, among others. His
first book, Going Nowhere Fast: Mobile Inequality in the Age of Translocality, was
published by Oxford University Press in 2020.
Andrew Herod, Distinguished Research Professor, Franklin College
of Arts and Sciences, University of Georgia
Andrew Herod is a human geographer and political economist interested in
how the economic geography of capitalism is made. Within that broad
description, he has been particularly focused upon exploring how working