Given the transformations taking place in many parts of Southeast Asia, the question of labor remains as pertinent today as it ever has been. Labor issues are central to the social tensions marking the transformations taking place in both rural and urban areas, and underscore the myriad ways people have responded to economic and political crisis. In seeking to understand the multiple and specific dimensions of labor across a range of time-frames (colonial and contemporary), economic sectors, labor processes and community contexts. In seeking to provoke debate, the book reveals the variety of experiences evident in countries and regions marked by capitalist and (post) socialist regulatory frameworks, and contrasting labor regimes, histories and cultures. The contributions show the importance of critically examining both the complex nature of global-local links and the particular ways economic processes are around the themes of labor regimes, labor processes, labor mobility and labor communities, the essays show how economic development is not only shaped by market forces but is also interlocked in systems of meaning.