Great Recession: Eat More Shrimp!

Jobs sewing clothes for American and European stores drives many Asian economies

In Bangladesh, shrimp hatcheries are shutting down for lack of demand. Twenty-two out of 58 have closed nationally, according to Bangladeshi Econ blogger Rashed Chowdhury; it’s the second-largest export industry in the struggling country. The largest, clothing (check the label on the shirt you’re wearing; odds are at least a sleeve or two has passed through Dhaka’s textile factories) has also faced a sudden crash — owing to fewer shoppers in the US and Europe.

The problems should, in theory, be less painful in wealthy Japan. But a little-discussed population of Brazilian immigrants, the third-largest group of foreigners in Japan (after Koreans and Chinese) is suddenly finding life insupportable in one of Asia’s most expensive countries. As many as a quarter million Brazilian workers flocked to Japan during boom years in the 80s and early 90s, when a galloping Japanese economy forced a labor shortage and a sudden relaxation of visa restrictions for foreign workers. Twenty years later, the last in are the first out (video in Japanese; translation follows the video):

Mr. Pereira spends his days checking trash heaps for aluminum cans and junk he can bring to recycling centers and exchange for money. At the beginning of the clip, he takes a full bicycle load of old appliances and exchanges them for 350 yen (about $3). Instead of using the money on himself, he saves it so he can send it to his wife and children in Brazil. As a result, Pereira eats food he finds in the garbage.

The clip ends with Pereira making a phone call to his family on January 1st. They ask him to come home, but he tells them he is determined to stay in Japan and earn money to help them.

Where Bangladesh had factories, and Japan had the world’s second largest economy, Paraguay had neither, and the crisis has pinched an already-tight job market enough to tilt immigration statistics upward. At SomosParaguayos.com, a blog that collects stories of Paraguayans who have left home to find work abroad, “Mako,” a middle-class shop owner, explains why he left for Spain [Spanish text top, English translation below]:

En mi caso particular me vine a España porque estaba totalmente arruinado económicamente; de tener una bodega, un bar y una despensa, en pocos años terminamos en ruina, cada vez se vendia menos, la venta callejera que vendia mas barato sin pagar impuestos, el pago de alquiler, personal y las ventas cayeron a pique, y los servicios públicos cada vez mas caros…Claro que los extraño, extraño mi casa, mis parientes, mis perros, y extraño mucho el tomar tereré sin la menor prisa bajo el mango, como si el tiempo no existiera, extraño a mis parientes en las navidades, cumpleaños, bodas o el simple hecho de reunirnos a comer tallarin con pollo un domingo.

In my particular case, I came to Spain because I was ruined economically; I had a wine shop, bar and a neighborhood store, and in no time I was in ruins, I sold less and less, the street vendors sold items cheaper without paying taxes, rent, personnel, and my sales went down and the public services were more and more expensive….Of course I miss (my family), I miss my house, my relatives, my dogs, and I miss drinking tereré (herbal water) under the mango tree and having no hurry, as if time did not exist, I miss my relatives during Christmastime, birthdays, weddings or the simple act of getting together to eat chicken with noodles on a Sunday

What’s harder to quantify — beyond layoff statistics and immigration trends — is the cultural impact of the economic forces. But several East Asian bloggers have found cases from Korea, Taiwan and the Chinese Mainland that somewhat refute the popular image of pitiless competition for jobs.

An encouraging letter written by a father in South Korea to his job-seeking son has gone viral in Korea, after appearing in Korean online. An excerpt of the letter:

…원망하고 질책을 하기엔 너무 늦어 버렸다…

성공한 사람일수록 진실 되어야 후환이 없는 법이다

부디 명심 하거라—평생을 살아온 경험에서 얻은 이야기니—

경제 어려운것 열심히 노력 하면 반드시 좋아질 날이 있다

하지만 그것은 여러 사람들의 노력이듯 자신들의 몫이기도 하니까…”

“….It is too late to resent and reproach…. Successful people should be honest, otherwise they will face troubles later. Please bear it in mind….It is from my life experiences… You can overcome a difficult economic situation if you work hard. A good day will definitely come. As it is from efforts from many people, it is also from your own effort….”

A labor activist in Taiwan took the aggressive step of  criticizing commentators who blamed unemployment on the laziness or lack of initiative of the unemployed:

台灣的失業工人之所以會獨自走向貧窮、燒炭的命運，很大部分正是因為我們長期把失業當成個別勞工的錯誤與罪過，卻錯失集體面對、思考制度結構嚴重缺損的問題。如何透過這次因權貴階級把玩資本遊戲，而讓無辜勞工承擔痛苦的大失業潮，讓大眾至少能在「失業不只是我的錯」這個共識下，思考並推動妥善處理失業創傷的制度療法，才是一個正確的理絡，絕對不該再走回高唱勞工自我調適、增值的老路上。

The reason why Taiwanese unemployed workers have to face poverty alone and commit suicide by burning coals is [suffocation -- ed] , for the most part, that we always treat unemployment as a fault and error of individual labour, while we fail to collectively face and reflect upon the serious shortcomings of social system and structure. We should make it clear that it is the power elites’ capital game that leads to massive unemployment and people’s suffering, hence, to reach a public consensus that “I lost my job and it is not just my fault”. Such consensus is the base for further reflection and advocacy for a systematic cure that can deal with the pain of unemployment. We should not go back to the old way that asks workers to adjust themselves and increase their own value.

And finally, people are getting fed up in places where criticism can be illegal. In Baoding, Hebei, China, [linked text is in Chinese] about 6000 workers are on strike, as their factory was sold and they would be soon laid off. They marched to Beijing to present a mass petition. This action worried others because it might heighten political instability, writes China blogger 阿丁 (A-Ding):

有人担心工人们冲动而打砸抢，就别鸡巴瞎操心了——罢工不过是工人们为了自身权益采取的诉求方式，工人们比你们理智。几乎每一次暴力事件，都是统治者高高在上，不肯疏浚民怨、强奸公正和暴力压制的结果

Someone is worrying that the workers might sabotage and rob; it is not necessary at all- strike is just a method for the workers to protect their rights and interest. They are far more rational than you might think. Almost every violent incident is but the result of what the rulers have done, that they dominate with privilege, ignore public grief and suppress with violence.

It’s not entirely clear what stage of late capitalism we’re in when someone’s explaining the purpose of a strike to the world’s largest communist government.

What does “global economic crisis” really mean? In partnership with Global Voices, a non-profit project of more than two hundred translators, editors and bloggers, Foreign Correspondents will be presenting an occasional series on how the US mortgage collapse has spread like a contagion abroad. Global Voices’ Southeast Asia editor, Mong Palatino, will be collecting and translating dozens of reports on the crisis from non-US media and blogs. For the next two months, versions of the joint reports will appear here and on Global Voices’ site, which you can reach by clicking the button below.