Building China : informal work and the new precariat / Sarah Swider ; cover design, Richanna Patrick.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Swider, Sarah Christine, author.

Contributor:

Patrick, Richanna, cover designer.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Construction industry--China.

Construction industry.

Construction workers--China.

Construction workers.

Informal sector (Economics)--China.

Informal sector (Economics).

Migrant labor--China.

Migrant labor.

Labor movement--China.

Labor movement.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (212 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, New York ; London, [England] : ILR Press, an imprint of Cornell University Press, 2015.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Roughly 260 million workers in China have participated in a mass migration of peasants moving into the cities, and construction workers account for almost half of them. In Building China, Sarah Swider draws on her research in Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shanghai between 2004 and 2012, including living in an enclave, working on construction jobsites, and interviews with eighty-three migrants, managers, and labor contractors. This ethnography focuses on the lives, work, family, and social relations of construction workers. It adds to our understanding of China's new working class, the deepening rural-urban divide, and the growing number of undocumented migrants working outside the protection of labor laws and regulation. Swider shows how these migrants-members of the global "precariat," an emergent social force based on vulnerability, insecurity, and uncertainty-are changing China's class structure and what this means for the prospects for an independent labor movement.The workers who build and serve Chinese cities, along with those who produce goods for the world to consume, are mostly migrant workers. They, or their parents, grew up in the countryside; they are farmers who left the fields and migrated to the cities to find work. Informal workers-who represent a large segment of the emerging workforce-do not fit the traditional model of industrial wage workers. Although they have not been incorporated into the new legal framework that helps define and legitimize China's decentralized legal authoritarian regime, they have emerged as a central component of China's economic success and an important source of labor resistance.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

1. Building China and the Making of a New Working Class

2. The Hukou System, Migration, and the Construction Industry

3. Mediated Employment

4. Embedded Employment

5. Individual Employment

6. Protest and Organizing among Informal Workers under Restrictive Regimes

7. Informal Precarious Workers, Protests, and Precarious Authoritarianism

Appendix A. Methods, Sampling, and Access

Appendix B. List of Construction Sites

Appendix C. List of Interviews

Notes

References

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781501701719

1501701711

9781501701726

150170172X

OCLC:

1080549691