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.