Extended case across time and borders: Global ethnography of factory regimes, migration channels, and skill transfer in China, Vietnam, and Japan

We develop a reflexive, comparative global ethnography of labor and migration in Asia by operationalizing Burawoy’s extended case method across its forces–connections–imaginations triad. Connecting labor- and migration-regime studies, we couple shopfloor politics with cross-border governance to explain domination and stalled mobility. We draw on long-term ethnography in Shenzhen and Ho Chi Minh City alongside analysis of Vietnam–China–Japan corridors under Japan’s Technical Intern Training Program (TITP). We conceptualize factory domination as “conciliatory despotism,” coupling petty coercion with affective brokerage to mediate global value-chain pressures. We recast cross-border skill transfer as a social governance problem, with the TITP delivering largely symbolic certification. Synthesizing these claims through Harvey’s and Jessop’s spatial and temporal fixes, we propose a framework coupling efficiency governance and social governance. We illustrate how capital rules through time, paperwork, and cross-border risk displacement, underscoring the value of Burawoy’s method in critiquing and redesigning contemporary labor governance.