The Benefits of Learning in Clusters: Analyzing Upward Mobility for Skilled Workers in the Cebu Furniture Cluster

Abstract

Recent debates emphasize the role of collective learning as a major factor in facilitating and maintaining competitiveness for clusters of small enterprises in developing countries. However, few studies on learning in industrial clusters in developing countries have analyzed the benefits from learning by looking at improved workers' positions and conditions in the cluster. This paper fills this gap in the existing literature by focusing on whether workers in the furniture cluster in Metro Cebu (the Philippines) have access to upward mobility within employment in the cluster, based on their formal and informal learning. This paper demonstrates that their ‘embodied expertise’ is rewarded only to a small extent and labour movements are more the result of job insecurity than of pursuing opportunities for upward mobility within employment.