Precarious accumulation fast fashion bosses in transnational Guangzhou Nellie Chu

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Chu, Nellie, 1979- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ready-to-wear clothing industry--China--Guangzhou--Management.

Ready-to-wear clothing industry.

Ready-to-wear clothing industry--China--Guangzhou.

Internal migrants--China.

Internal migrants.

Capitalism--China.

Capitalism.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 265 pages) illustrations

Contained In:

e-Duke Books Scholarly Collection 2026

Place of Publication:

Durham Duke University Press 2026

Summary:

"Precarious Accumulation is an ethnography of migrant entrepreneurs from across China, West Africa, and South Korea participating in fast fashion commodity chains in Guangzhou, China. These entrepreneurs generate new forms of migratory labor, commodity production, and cross-cultural exchange in a globalizing China. Rural migrants from China's countryside collaborate with South Korean jobbers and West African traders as they collectively bridge the transnational supply chains of fast fashion. In their attempts to escape poverty, wage work, and unemployment in their home countries and native places, these migrant entrepreneurs aspire to become good, even godly, model-entrepreneurs by improvising novel forms of subcontracted labor and cross-cultural collaboration. Their attempts, however, engender a world of labor exploitation, racialized policing, and extortion. In this predatory "bust economy," peasant landlords, private officers, and market competitors extract fees and siphon profits from the migrant bosses. Nellie Chu follow the world of this just-in-time production through family based piece-work, where the bosses are both exploited and exploiters, dodging rent collectors and collecting fees. Precarious Accumulation offers a unique close-up of emergent Chinese liberal capitalism at the ground level, through the lives of the migrant bosses."-- Provided by publisher

Contents:

Introduction: migrant bosshood and the making of global fast fashion

Made in China, just in time

Stalled mobility

Surveillance and regulation in the Shenfen (identification) economy

Speculative real estate and flexible appropriation

Transnational migrant bosshood

Conclusion: the dilemmas of migrant bosshood and supply chain capitalism in the era of COVID-19

Notes:

Description based on print version record

Includes bibliographical references and index

Other Format:

Print version Chu, Nellie, 1979- Precarious accumulation

ISBN:

9781478061830

1478061839

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license