Southeast Asian Workers in a Just-in-Time Pandemic

This chapter looks at the modern just-in-time (JIT) economy, a novel economic context for producing goods-and facilitating pandemics. It examines points where the global economy, Covid-19, and Southeast Asian labour interact. These intersections reveal some important truths both about the JIT economy and about more general consequences of the mobility of humans and their “fellow-travellers.” Southeast Asian workers, whether labouring as migrant workers in Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand or labouring at home, supply relatively cheap wares for the world. Many experience confined living and working conditions, where disease transmission can accelerate. The chapter then considers some Southeast Asian workers’ experiences in production, care, and transport. It concludes with the often-forgotten material connectedness of humans to other plants and animals. Either inter-species disruption and sudden new interconnections will diminish, or they will pose ongoing challenges to this just-in-time world. © the several contributors 2021.