| Summary: | This thesis seeks to explore the linkages between the networks which facilitate the exchange of information and assistance regarding internal Cambodian labour migration, and the physical assets and social systems within which, it is held here, they are embedded. In doing so, it revisits the area of enquiry recently associated with the social capital literature, with a new set of methodologies designed to circumvent some of the shortcomings associated with that theory. This is undertaken first, through recourse to the quantitative methodologies associated with network theory, and second, to the literature on endogenous systems of risk mitigation in response to natural disasters and climate pressures. In order that these local responses are framed fully within their multi-scalar context, structural violence theory is utilised in a linking role. Thus, labour migration is viewed herein as a lens through which to view the dynamic evolution of traditional Cambodian social systems. In particular, it is effective as a means of understanding resilience and response to the Kingdom’s contemporary environment, both in terms of its persistent vulnerability to natural disasters and climate shocks, and the rapid, but highly unequal, economic growth which has characterised the “economic miracle” of the previous decade. Indeed, the nature of the inequality which has characterised this period of rapid growth will be one of the primary foci of this study, which offers to the literature an account of how uneven distributions of social and physical assets and risks are entrenched in complex ways by the process of labour migration.
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