China’s precariats

Lee, Ching Kwan

doi:10.1080/14747731.2018.1479015

Cited by 33 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Finally, as other scholars suggest, our contemporary era is unprecedented because the sphere of social reproduction is not only deeply commodified but also increasingly politicized (Bhattacharya, 2017; Lee, 2019). In many places around the world, we see growing labor organizing and unrest at the point of social reproduction, for example, the unionization of domestic workers and protests against welfare cutbacks (Blofield and Jokela, 2018; Schmalz et al, 2017; Solari, 2018).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spinners or sitters? Regimes of social reproduction and urban Chinese workers’ employment choices

Dong

2020

International Journal of Comparative Sociology

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Despite China being the world’s factory, its labor market is now primarily service-based with a high level of informality. When formal manufacturing and informal service sectors co-exist, how do workers make their choices? While existing literature focuses on rural migrant workers’ experience in the Chinese labor system, this study extends the analytical scope to low-skill urban workers. Drawing on archival, interview, and ethnographic data in a large industrial city in central China, I compare urban women’s different trajectories in textile manufacturing and informal domestic service. Building on labor regime studies and Social Reproduction Theory, I develop a framework called “regimes of social reproduction” to explain workers’ job choices. I argue that China’s post-socialist industrial restructuring has given rise to a public–private hybrid regime of social reproduction, which keeps workers’ pension and healthcare schemes in the public domain and pushes childcare, elderly care, and domestic work to the private sphere and then marketizes them. For urban workers, when choosing between formal manufacturing and informal service, it is their position within the regime of social reproduction that plays a decisive role. Their position is assessed along the following two dimensions: (1) the degree of a worker’s dependency on the employment-based welfare provisions and (2) the degree of demand for reproductive labor in a worker’s family. Challenging the conventional view that formal manufacturing jobs are more desirable than informal service jobs, I conclude that under the current regime of social reproduction, the booming informal service market may provide some best earning opportunities for low-skilled urban workers. However, the same regime has also set significant limits on such opportunities as these urbanites’ availability to work is highly contingent on (lack of) demand for reproductive labor from their own family.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spinners or sitters? Regimes of social reproduction and urban Chinese workers’ employment choices

Dong

2020

International Journal of Comparative Sociology

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“…The proliferation of “flexible employment” has adversely impacted not only those subcontract workers. Regular workers would also encounter greater difficulty in making collective demands on employers as they now must compete with contingent laborers in the fissured workplace (Chan, Nair, & Rhomberg, ; Lee, ).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

State and labor in China, 1978-2018

Chan

2019

Journal of Labor and Society

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China's reintegration into global capitalism has greatly transformed migration patterns and labor relations since the late 1970s. This article focuses on worker activism in this transformation. It shows that the dynamic interactions between worker mobilization and government reaction have continued to shape the forms and outcomes of labor contention. Aggrieved workers have used legal and extralegal strategies to defend their rights and interests. In response, from the early 2000s, the leadership has sought to preserve social stability by raising minimum wages, extending social insurance coverage, and expanding access to grievance redress. But freedom of association remains severely restricted. Labor nongovernmental organizations and more recently a new generation of left‐wing university students have attempted to fill the representation gap to support workers in struggle. State and labor relations remain contentious in Chinese development.

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“…Working in the trade painting industry without access to institutional apparatuses like curatorial, collector or museum support, evidence abounds of the slim chances of them attaching their names to their work, not to mention being famous or gaining institutional recognition. As Lee (2019) points out, precarization is a process of becoming excluded from the labour market to various degrees, including being denied the recognition of one's labour. Such effacement of wall painters' identities in their work thwarts their longing for the rewards of 'making originals'.…”

Section: 'I Have My Own Touch' -From 'A Life Of Original Work' To Creatingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hoping amidst precarity: Changing modes of hope in the vicissitudes of a Chinese art village

Chen

2021

The Sociological Review

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Focusing on an ‘atypical’ group of creative workers, viz., rural-to-urban migrant painters in China, this article takes hope as a lens to investigate an extreme case of creative work precarity. Drawing on the findings of a 42-month longitudinal ethnographic study, I demonstrate how wall painters cope with the precarious present by channelling their initial hopes for a future of freedom, original work and stability into three different, everyday practices: playing, creating and waiting. Approaching precarity from an intersectional perspective, this study explicates how the multiple dimensions of precarity interact with each other in forming wall painters’ shifting modes of hope. Manifesting the fluidity and contingency of wall painters’ hopes in the vicissitudes of Dafen during China’s post-industrial turn, this study reconciles the debate in creative labour studies that sees hope as either a utopian fantasy or an everyday practice and further contributes to the political economy of hope in creative labour studies.

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China’s precariats

Cited by 33 publications

References 27 publications

Spinners or sitters? Regimes of social reproduction and urban Chinese workers’ employment choices

Spinners or sitters? Regimes of social reproduction and urban Chinese workers’ employment choices

State and labor in China, 1978-2018

Hoping amidst precarity: Changing modes of hope in the vicissitudes of a Chinese art village

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