FDI, Labour, and Everyday Economies in Southeast Asia
FDI, Labour, and Everyday Economies in Southeast Asia
This research explores how Korean foreign direct investment shapes gendered and racialised labour, service economies, and everyday social relations in Southeast Asia. Through an ethnographic approach, I examine how local actors negotiate, accommodate, and reshape FDI-driven transformations in their daily lives.
Yoo, M. FDI, Nightlife, and Power in Northern Vietnam: Entangled Sub-imperialism and Racial Capitalism in Bac Ninh.
Invited chapter for The Handbook for the Geographies of Race: A Multidisciplinary Global Perspective (De Gruyter), edited by Rasul A. Mowatt, Ishan Ashutosh, and Patricia de Toledo Basile. (In progress)
Hwang, J., Kim, H., and Yoo, M. (2025). A Hidden Yet Emerging Asian Racial Capitalism: South Korea’s Dynamics in the Care Industry. Asian Journal of Women’s Studies, 31(1): 117- 131.
This paper examines the emergence and institutionalization of gendered racial capitalism within South Korea’s care industry, particularly against the backdrop of demographic challenges such as low birth rates and an aging population. By analyzing the neoliberal marketization of South Korea’s care industry since the 2000s, this study highlights how the industry has evolved to reveal deeply embedded dynamics of gendered racial capitalism. The shift from employing co-ethnic Joseonjok workers to introducing domestic helpers exposes the previously concealed racialization of co- ethnic workers and marks a critical transition toward more visible forms of racialized exploitation. This analysis demonstrates how the Philippine Domestic Helper Pilot Project exacerbates patriarchal gender discrimination, intensifies stratification between Korean and foreign women, and ultimately deepens gendered racial capitalism in South Korea. Korean feminism must take an active and leading role in addressing this phenomenon, advancing it as both a vital academic focus and an urgent call for transformative policies and societal reforms.
Keywords: Racial capitalism; global care chain; neo-racism; Filipina caregivers; South Korea
Youk, S.H. and M. Yoo. (2022). The local upgrading and downgrading: via interactions of the local and transnational corporations in Bac Ninh, Vietnam. The Journal of Asia Studies 25(1):227-250. (in Korean, KCI)
This paper discovers the impact of global capital on the local socio-economic landscape surrounding industrial clusters in developing countries, particularly shedding light on local industries which support productive activities in the industrial clusters and enhance livability for the workers. The Global Value Chains and Global Production Networks literature has paid attention to the transformation of the local landscape only led by the industrial cluster development. This paper shows that the conventional GVC-GPN literature has focused on the lead firm-driven governance of production and consumption-related activities in an industrial sector, and the local transformation tends to be described by a frame of social and economic upgrading(downgrading) within the governance. Unlike the conventional literature, this paper focuses on the local upgrading and downgrading that happens outside of the governance by drawing upon the case of Bac Hinh City, where a global company, Samsung electronics-led electronic manufacturing cluster. By arguing an extended perspective on upgrading/downgrading, it suggests adding upgrading/downgrading of service industries and livability, on top of economic and social upgrading in conventional literature. Of service industries, it spotlights the nighttime industries’ development for Korean male customers in Bac Ninh as a form of local upgrading/downgrading. As seen, inserting the local into GVC-GPN leads to production-related changes(upgrading/downgrading) and also a range of livelihood-related changes such as demography, gender relations, health, education, and social infrastructure. It can change the whole range of the local landscape. Therefore, this study argues that relations and interactions
between global capital and local development require an extended perspective on local upgrading/downgrading.
Keywords: Transnational corporations, Regional development, GVC, GPN, Social upgrading, Economic upgrading