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Continent of Resistance

Continent of Resistance

by Kriangsak Teera-Hong & Kevin Lin

News Society & Culture

Season 3

Reclaiming Asian Labor Futures: Centering Care and Joy

We close the season by challenging the culture of burnout and self-sacrifice that so often haunts progressive movements. Shifting the focus to the "politics of care." We are curious about what care-centered organizing looks like in practice—from shared leadership and restorative rest to the integration of joy in our work. How can we build movements that sustain the very people who sustain them?

Reclaiming Asian Labor Futures: Organizing in a Converging Crisis

As labor struggles increasingly intersect with climate collapse and rising authoritarianism, is the traditional "mobilizing and advocacy" model still enough? We question our collective obsession with "shiny new solutions," the professionalization of activism, and the movement's overreliance on outside experts. Instead, they discuss what it actually takes to put true power back where it belongs: in the workers' hands.

Reclaiming Asian Labor Futures: Rewriting the Culture of Labor Movement

In this episode, we unpack the often-taken-for-granted culture within labor movements and explore the vital shift toward relationship-based organizing. Examining how workers historically build a culture of genuine solidarity, they ask a fundamental question: How can we foster movements that are as resilient as they are democratic?

Reclaiming Asian Labor Futures: Leveraging the Strategic Power of Workers

We continue the conversation on the long-standing assumption that informal labor is unorganizable, positioning it instead as the defining norm of the modern workforce. By examining these diverse leverage points, the conversation moves beyond reactive protests to consider how movements can bridge the gap between temporary resistance and long-term, sustainable structural change.

Reclaiming Asian Labor Futures: Who’s Reclaiming the New Frontiers of Labor?

Labor struggles no longer unfold only on the factory floor. This episode centers on whether new frontiers, such as the rise of platform workers, are truly new or simply extensions of the old system. We discuss the long-standing norms within labor movements that equate organizing primarily with factory and industrial work, noting that this narrow focus often leaves significant contemporary struggles on the fringe.

Reclaiming Asian Labor Futures: From Frustration to Imagination

In our new season of Continent of Resistance, Reclaiming Asian Labor Futures, Kriangsak Teerakowitkajorn and Kevin Lin are joined by Nash Tysmans to explore how the terrain of labor struggle is shifting across Asia—from industrial to service-oriented and informal work—and how new forms of organizing are emerging in response. We begin with the frustrations we face as organizers, activists, and workers, and end by imagining what labor’s future could look like. Each episode leans into curiosity, closing with questions rather than certainties. We would like to thank Bayley Boecker for editing the series and voicing the episode introductions.

Season 2

Whither Asia's Labor Movements?

In the final episode of this series, we reflect on the key takeaways from our exploration of worker struggles across Asia. The historical and geographical context of strike waves offers valuable insights, and the comparative analysis is important for understanding labor movements. We highlight the growing shift toward organizing in non-industrial sectors and the crucial role of grassroots mobilization. We also address the emerging importance of other groups of workers such as platform and care workers, exploring how labor movements must adapt to these new dynamics to remain relevant and effective.

Repression, Adaption and New Directions (2010s)

In the aftermath of the major strike waves across Asia in the 2010s, the initial worker victories in Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and China were met with increasing government repression and restrictive labor laws. We analyze the more repressive environment for labour activism, the deepening of neoliberal policies, and how workers are mobilizing beyond the workplace, engaging in broader political movements and structural change. We touch on the tensions between narrow factory-based industrial struggles and broader class-based movements. We end with a discussion about the growing activism of workers in public sectors and precarious positions, who have become more organized following the Covid-19 pandemic.

Uprise and Unity amid Global Upheaval (2000s-2010s)

Set against the backdrop of the 2008 financial crisis and its significant impacts on export sectors in Asia, workers in Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and China rose in unprecedented numbers, demanding fair wages, better conditions, and stronger protections. This is a high point in the wave of workers' strikes and mobilizations that swept across Asia during the late 2000s and early 2010s. We are interested in how workers adapted their strategies, sometimes scaling up localized protests into larger movements or general strikes. Despite diverse political and economic contexts, these labor movements reveal a common thread of resilience and growth, as workers gained experience and confidence while confronting mounting global pressures.

Democratization, Political Reforms and Organized Labor (2000s)

Political reforms and market liberalization significantly shaped the terrains of workers’ struggles in Asia. While Cambodia, Indonesia, China and Vietnam have also all seen market liberalisation and export-oriented industrialisation, they experienced divergent political trajectories, with some undergoing democratization and others remaining as authoritarian states. In this episode, we look at the impacts of these developments, including the institutionalisation of labour relations such as in Cambodia, and the continuing political exclusion of labour as in Vietnam and China. We discuss how labour movements responded to the political and economic dynamics by drawing on a mixed repertoire of organizing, mobilization and advocacy.

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