The Bottom Worker in East Asia

The protagonist of The Bottom Worker in East Asia: Composition and Transformation under Neoliberal Globalization is a bottom worker. Bottom workers are workers in the North and the South, who have suffered from the downward pressure of hierarchy under neoliberal globalization and have been re-stratified among themselves, from employed irregularly to self-employed and the working homeless. The existing division has become increasingly more fluid as the disparities in working conditions and wages are compressed downward. The book examines workers’ entrapment at the bottom, getting off the bottom, and intersecting each other by analyzing how they work, reside in, and build lifeworlds in cities and suburbs of four East Asian countries. In this way, it draws a dynamic picture of the contemporary working class.

Contributors are: Tatsuto Asakawa, Ilju Kim, Jah-Hon Koo, Ashita Matsumiya, Yuko Matsusono, Shinji Sakamoto, Keishiro Tsutsumi, Keiko Yamaguchi, and Tsubasa Yuki.

Hideo Aoki, Ph.D. (2000), University of Tsukuba, is Director-general of Institute of Social Theory and Dynamics. He has published many articles on bottom workers and homelessness in Japan, including Japan’s Underclass: Day Laborers and the Homeless (Trans Pacific Press, 2000).

Tomonori Ishioka is professor of sociology at Nihon University. His scholarly articles have appeared in journals of sociology, social research, and urban and cultural studies. His book Everyday Life of Underdog Filipino Boxers (2012) won an award in 2013 from the Japan Sociological Society.