A New Generation of Bangkok Street Vendors: Economic Crisis as Opportunity and Threat

Announcing: Maneepong, Chuthatip and John Walsh, “A New Generation of Bangkok Street Vendors: Economic Crisis as Opportunity and Threat,” Cities, in press, corrected proof, available at:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2012.11.002
.

Abstract:

In 1997, the financial crisis seriously damaged the Thai economy and led to the closing of many companies. Previously, it had been believed that laid-off workers would mostly return to rural employment or part-time urban tasks. However, research among street vendors in Bangkok reveals that many of the retrenched workers preferred to, and did, remain in the city and put to use their latent business and entrepreneurial skills to practice by establishing their own informal businesses. This group of vendors tends to dominate these activities, often through business savvy, with experience in the formal sector. Instead of the “street” image of vendors being that of domestic migrants, the “new generation” of vendors is evolving into something more complex. The paper focuses on documenting and understanding the phenomenon of new generation street vendors. We attempt to derive lessons from the 1997 economic crisis to improve the transition of vendors from the formal to “new” informal sector under current, and likely worsening, economic conditions. This paper analyses how and why these two groups express themselves and how they respond differently to the socio-economic and political forces that have an impact on the urban space they share. It then considers whether policy makers should regard street vending as a viable part of the economy which is not transitional but more permanent and should be regarded as an important part of the urban economy of industrializing nations such as Thailand.

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Highlights

► In 1997, the financial crisis seriously damaged the Thai economy and led to the closing of companies. ► Many of the retrenched workers use their skills to practice by establishing their informal businesses. ► This group of vendors tends to dominate these activities, often through business savvy, with experience in the formal sector. ► The paper focuses on documenting and understanding the phenomenon of “new generation” street vendors.

After the 1997 Financial Crisis: The Behaviors and Implications of a New Cohort of Street Vendors

Announcing: Walsh, John and Chuthatip Maneepong, “After the 1997 Financial Crisis: The Behaviors and Implications of a New Cohort of Street
Vendors,” Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, Vol.33, No.2 (July, 2012), pp.255-69. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9493.2012.00464.x.

Abstract:

After the 1997 financial crisis, many retrenched workers preferred not to return to provincial homes but remained in Bangkok to establish informal retail businesses in branded and other consumer products. In contrast to traditional street vendors, who specialized in food items primarily catering for low-income customers, and focused on high volume, these ‘new generation’ street vendors also adopted more formal business practices. Given their greater sophistication and better education, we hypothesized that they would be more organized advocates of vendors’ rights and thus more prone to conflicts with municipal authorities. Based on interviews, however, we found that new generation vendors are adaptive to location and business strategy, and prefer a low profile in dealing with officialdom. By contrast, traditional vendors remained more tied to particular spaces, are more likely to stand up for their rights to use public space and, because they expect more from government, are more prone to conflicts with municipal authorities. Our findings relate to ongoing discussion on the rights and needs of street vendors to access urban public space and the responsibilities of authorities to meet and provide for these informal sector livelihoods that make up a significant share of the national economy in Thailand, as elsewhere in the global South.

More:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9493.2012.00464.x/abstract
.

Perceived Benefits Gained from Online Game Playing among University Students in Bangkok

Announcing:

Techavimol, Pawana and John Walsh, “Perceived Benefits Gained from Online Game Playing among University Students in Bangkok,” Thammasat International Journal of Science and Technology, Vol.16, No.2 (April-June, 2011), pp.54-65, available at:
http://www.tijst.net/issues/2011/no2/2011_V16_No2_6.pdf
.

Abstract:

Although presumed negative aspects of online game playing are widely disseminated in the media, the possible benefits that might be derived from this appear much less frequently. Possible benefits include the reduction of stress, promotion of analytical skills and team-work and the fostering of relationships with other people around the world. Using a specifically-designed questionnaire, the authors investigate the extent to which a sample of 610 Thai undergraduate students from a variety of universities in Bangkok feel that they have benefited from online game playing and which of the various benefits appear to them to be most relevant and most often achieved. The results are discussed and recommendations drawn to incorporate greater use of game-playing modalities into the classroom environment and to enhance the link between education and industry by fostering partnerships to create more location-specific Thai-language content for use in the education system.

Fighting Climate Change: The Peri-Urban Issue

The peri-urban part of a city is that area around a city in which the urban  areas merges with the rural. In many cases, particularly in the past, it was  quite clear where a city started and ended – after all, for the purposes of  defence and security, many cities had walls built around them to mark their  limits and to act as places in which the military held sway.

Read the full article here.

East Asian Labour Market Regimes in the Context of Global Economic Crisis

I plan to present this paper at the forthcoming International Conference on Global Turbulence: Challenges and Opportunities (
http://www.internationalconference.in/
): East Asian Labour Market Regimes in the Context of Global Economic Crisis: Do the Advanced Nations Offer Trajectory Paths for Those Following? The conference is due to be held here in Bangkok in early May.

Here is the abstract:

The global economic crisis caused by an improperly regulated financial sector giving way to excessive risk-taking behaviour has led to a worldwide crisis of austerity and of lack of jobs. The situation in East Asia is somewhat different from that in the western world in that finance bubbles had already been burst in the 1997 crisis and lessons learned from that. Nevertheless, developing East Asia is still dependent on western markets as destinations for exports as domestic markets remain insufficiently developed to absorb production of goods and services. In this situation, states such as Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia look to examples from elsewhere in the region concerning the means of transforming themselves from being part of the factory age, which limits growth at the upward end of the middle income range, into the higher income range of economies. Examples include the Republic of Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and even to some extent Malaysia. This raises the question of the extent to which the examples of those other states, in which labour market management has passed further along a familiar trajectory, offer practical examples that can be applied in the developing states that follow behind them. Issues of relevance in this case include wage and compensation issues, management of unions and the freedom of speech, association and collective bargaining, as well as the interaction between the education system and the labour market. This paper examines the cases of economically advanced East Asian states in terms of labour market development with a view to considering how those examples might be applied in those countries which now follow.

Keywords: labour markets, economic crisis, East Asia, Thailand, Korea

International Conference on Global Business Environment: Role of Education and Technology

The IFRD Conference has now ended, successfully enough. I was part of the following presentations:

Cheevapruk, Supitcha and John Walsh, “Implications for Management of the Entry of Foreign Retail and Wholesale Stores in Nonthaburi Wholesale Markets,” paper presented at the International Conference on Global Business Environment (ICGBE) (Bangkok: February, 2012).

Chintraruck, Alin and John Walsh, “Obstructions to the Implementation of Integrated Water Resource Management in Thailand,” paper presented at the International Conference on Global Business Environment (ICGBE) (Bangkok: February, 2012).

Lay Su Yin and John Walsh, “The Impact of Corporate Performance Assessment on Employee Attitudes in International Hotels in Yangon, Myanmar,” paper presented at the International Conference on Global Business Environment (ICGBE) (Bangkok: February, 2012).

Na Srito, Pornsakul and John Walsh, “Development Patterns in Nakhon Phanom in the Wake of the Opening of the Third Mekong Friendship Bridge,” paper presented at the International Conference on Global Business Environment (ICGBE) (Bangkok: February, 2012).

Walsh, John, “Management Issues in Cambodian Industrial Estates,” paper presented at the International Conference on Global Business Environment (ICGBE) (Bangkok: February, 2012).

Congratulations to all involved – we wait now to hear about whether any of the papers interest the various editors of the IFRD’s journals or, if not, we will look to have them published (after suitable amendments have been made) elsewhere.

 

After the 1997 Financial Crisis: New Vendor Cohorts and Behaviors in Bangkok: Interactions with Officialdom and Policy Implications

I am pleased to announce that the following paper has been accepted for publication by editors of the Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography:

Maneepong, Chuthatip and John Walsh, “After the 1997 Financial Crisis: New Vendor Cohorts and Behaviors in Bangkok: Interactions with Officialdom and Policy Implications.”

Abstract:

The 1997 financial crisis seriously damaged the Thai economy. Rather than return to provincial homes, many retrenched workers remained in Bangkok putting their training and business experience to use, establishing informal sector businesses, offering new products, such as own-brand designer goods and using more formal business models. By contrast, the traditional “old generation” street vendors specialized in food, primarily selling to low-income customers, and focused on volume. The hypothesis was that the “new generation” street vendors, given their greater sophistication, would be more organized, strong advocates of vendors’ rights, and more prone to conflict with authorities. However, research based on interviews with “new” and “old generation” vendors led to the opposite conclusion. The “new generation” vendors are adaptive to location and business strategies and  prefer a low profile in dealing with officialdom. By contrast, the “old generation” vendors are more tied to particular spaces and better organized; they expect more from government and this often results in conflict with authorities. This raises policy questions concerning whether urban public spaces should reject or retain street vending business, how to respond to its needs and conditions and what role bureaucratic bodies should play in relation to urban planning and policies towards street vendors.

Keyowords: Bangkok, city governance, street vending, urban development

I will be sure to provide details of final publication date as and when these become available.

Pathum Thani

I am out at the main campus now – the first time I have been here since before the floods came. The trip was extended by the best part of an hour because of the blockages on the road, debris and abandoned cars and so forth.

A great deal of the roadside communities had been badly affected – the watermarks showed just how high up the floods reached. I saw several cars that had been washed off the road and dumped into the ditches or lower ground along the roadside. Some offroad areas were still flooded but others, commercial and residential buildings, seem to have had the water pumped out.

Closer to the university, which is set in mostly agricultural land, nearly all the off road land remains under water (perhaps there is nowehere to pump the water to?).

The university building itself is open and reasonably clean, although the land around still bears the marks of the mud and dust. From the fourth floor, where I now sit, this is one of the views.

 It looks like flooded lands extend as far as can be imagined. It will need a few weeks at least for it all to drain away. The river and the klongs I saw on the way out here are also at pretty high levels. I’m not sure how long it will take to get back to the graduate campus and then home tonight.

Salaya Cleaning

We have been to Salaya this morning to move the little girl’s possessions from her previous dorm room to her new one – just one hundred metres away or thereabouts but in a largely unaffected area. Although her room had been on the first floor, the whole of the house is pretty much ruined.

The water level is very evident – waist high for me and rather higher for the womenfolk. The amount of mud and other matter in the water can be imagined from the dirtiness of the marks everywhere. The remnants of the mud and various bits of detritus are still hanging around everywhere.

The photos do not, of course, convey the smell or the amount of dust in the air, both of which are significant and detrimental to health, presumably. Pretty much everything inside the house which was touched by the water was ruined and is being thrown out. On the way out there, we saw many piles of rubbish which were household goods (or garden goods) which had been affected and discarded by people. Then again, it is an ill wind and so forth, and there are a number of water pickers (a better word than scavengers, I have decided) who are looking through the piles of rubbish for items that can be cleaned, rescued and either used or perhaps sold.

Along the front road facing Mahidol University in particular, the business owners are starting to open up – some are still clearing out the mud, some are pouring new layers of concrete over frontages (the water has opened up many potholes) and life is at least offering to return to normal. Good luck to them all, there is not much in the way of insurance for this.

The road back from Salaya to central Bangkok is passable now, although there are a few patches of water. The deepest is at the corner from the university road on to the expressway, where the water comes up perhaps half a metre on the left hand side of the road and we went into a concealed pothole – but non-small cars and motor bikes can make it through without serious problems if using care.

Getting Back to Normal

Although many people are still struggling with flooded homes and workplaces on the vicinity of Bangkok, further north and some areas of the city itself, our little patch is getting back to normal. We went to Central Ladprao on Saturday – it had opened the day before – and had no real difficulty getting there. There was some water near the SCB Plaza and cars were using the two outside lanes but the inside ones would have been passable if necessary.

Apart from that, there was plenty of mud to show where the water had reached and the place is going to look rather shabby for a while. Central itself had people there although it seemed to me a little less than might have been expected on a normal Saturday. Most shops were open, although the Tops supermarket was quite low on stock in some sectors and certain restaurants had some dishes off the menu.

Shops are among those who have suffered the most economically from the floods. Some have been shut completely, while others have struggled on despite fewer customers and difficulties in resupplying. As is generally the way with these things, industry representatives have taken the opportunity to request a whole range of breaks for their members,  while the media is pursing its own agenda by supporting claims from various people that the democratically elected government should abandon its manifesto completely and switch to policies that would better suit the establishment. Such a change is promoted as virtuous in nature.