Chinese Workers and Their “Linguistic Labour”: Philippine Online Gambling and Zambian Onsite Casinos

Abstract

Our paper examines the relationship between Chinese gambling capital, workplace exploitation, and labour migration. Focusing on Philippine online gambling and Zambian onsite casinos, we argue that the gambling sector’s capital accumulation relies on the “linguistic labour” provided by Chinese workers to facilitate online or onsite communication between the players and the firms. Chinese-funded gambling firms continually need to import Chinese workers through a combination of legal and illegal channels. After migrating, workers are disempowered from seeking outside remediation due to connections between the firms and the host state’s elites, and because of gambling’s illegal status in China. Firms can unilaterally increase working hours and impose unfair workplace arrangements on Chinese workers. Gambling capital’s reliance on the linguistic labour of workers and the industry’s murky legal status open up avenues for exploitation and multiple sites of extraction for Chinese capital.