‘Worn out’: debt discipline, hunger, and the gendered contingencies of the COVID-19 pandemic amongst Cambodian garment workers

Drawing on 203 quantitative surveys with women workers in Cambodia and a further set of semi-structured interviews 60 original participants, this paper is one the very first to present empirically grounded research from garment financial challenges navigating year COVID-19 pandemic. We show how making clothes be worn by Western consumers, poorly paid are reducing their eating repay long-term debts those newly taken cope wage reductions resulting factory closures, suspensions, cuts working hours. In its examination phenomenon, improves understanding gendered contingencies pandemic ‘wearing out’ through attempts reproduce life under (pre-existing) conditions privation. argue that debt-hunger nexus not new but reflects problems within Cambodia’s capitalist development, capitalism itself, as costs social reproduction risk privatised financialised body politic. The consolidating relations such they will outlast duration have long-lasting implications for families globally.