Abstract
AbstractMalaysia is the second largest palm oil producer in the world. In recent years, the state has portrayed palm oil as a favourable source of biomass for the global bioeconomy. Palm oil production has been heavily criticized and is often associated with social inequalities concerning land ownership, land use, access to land and environmental degradation. Palm oil expansion in Malaysia has resulted in the exploitation of migrant workers—a further expression of social inequality induced by industrial oil palm cultivation. Hence, investigating the working conditions of this group is crucial when examining existing, solidifying or evolving social inequalities in emerging bio-based industries. In this chapter, I draw on an existing body of literature and my own empirical findings in order to show that migrant workers are systematically superexploited in the Malaysian palm oil sector—an economic branch that could gain importance if the bioeconomy becomes a global reality.
Highlights
Bioeconomy as Green CapitalismHow we investigate social inequalities in an evolving bioeconomy depends on our perception of it and on the sphere we focus on while attempting to grasp the dynamic developments within relevant social relations
Due to the potential of palm oil to gain strategic importance within the region, a discussion of the possible impact of the transition towards a bioeconomy on labour relations must include a closer look at the working conditions faced by migrant workers in the Malaysian palm oil sector
I argued that the Malaysian palm oil sector rests on the superexploitation of migrant workers and that this is made possible by the social devaluation of this social group due to their citizenship
Summary
How we investigate social inequalities in an evolving bioeconomy depends on our perception of it and on the sphere we focus on while attempting to grasp the dynamic developments within relevant social relations. From a politico-economic perspective, bioeconomy can be seen as an attempt to reconfigure patterns of production, consumption and circulation (OECD 2019). Different bioeconomy visions share the goal of establishing a socially and environmentally sustainable economy (Backhouse et al 2017), none of them questions the fact that bioeconomy is built on the prevailing principles of capitalism (Goven and Pavone 2015). Any state policy striving for a bio-based transformation of the economy plays by the common rules
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