In the past five years, Myanmar’s economy and industrial sector have experienced significant development, which has pushed rural workforces into urban industries. Workers migrating from rural to urban areas in Myanmar cope with livelihood changes and adapt to urbanization and working in unfamiliar industrial settings, where they face a different working environment and hardships.
The purpose of this research is to better understand the livelihoods of such migrant workers in Yangon’s industrial zones and to assess how they adapt and survive in their new environment. The changes in livelihood of rural migrants when they move to work in factories in industrial zones is investigated in this volume by analysis of their lives while looking at how they can improve their livelihoods, social relations, and labor rights in the context of Myanmar’s contemporary labor laws and the economic, social and political factors that drive workers to migrate from rural to urban industrial areas.

1. Employment in foreign countries.