Swider, S C (2008) Behind great walls: Modes of employment among migrant construction workers in China's informal labor market. PhD thesis, University of Wisconsin - Madison, USA.
Abstract
This is a study of "undocumented" migrant workers in the informal sector of China's construction industry. It is about the informal economy, undocumented (illegal) migration and the gendered nature of the global labor market. It starts by "opening the black box" of the informal labor market uncovering significant variance in these workers' experiences. Based on intensive ethnographic observation of illegal migrant labor in the construction industry in China, this dissertation analyses the interconnected patterns of labor markets and employment relations experienced by these workers in two cities, Beijing and Guangzhou. I identify three such patterns, which I refer to as "modes of employment": embedded, mediated, and individualized. In embedded employment, mechanisms such as social capital, bounded solidarity, enforceable trust, and the reciprocity of social networks in migrant enclaves shape both access to jobs and employment relations on the job. In mediated employment, workers get jobs through labor contractors who also play a key role in regulating employment relations in various ways. In individualized employment, workers find employment through unregulated spot markets. Workers are inserted into employment relations as separate individuals rather than as members of a migrant enclave social network or as dependants of a labor contractor, and as a result they are particularly vulnerable to despotic and extremely exploitative treatment. This micro level analysis maps out the variance and shows how these how "modes of employment" shape the ways these migrants are inserted spatially into the city, the labor process, regimes of control, gender, migratory patterns and the ways in which these migrants experience their "illegal" status. The study also offers a macro analysis which nuances our understandings of how the state shapes the informal labor. Most studies focus on how more or less regulation and enforcement impact the size of the informal sector. In a comparison between Beijing and Guangzhou, this study shifts the focus and shows how different levels of "state tolerance" impact labor market configurations. Specifically, it shows how increased or decreased regulation reconfigures the informal labor market by shifting workers into different "modes of employment" or sectors of the informal market.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor: | Seidman, G W |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | gender; informal sector; market; trust; migrant workers; employment; markets; migration; regulation; construction worker; China |
| Index terms: | China, informal sector, migrant worker, regulation, configuration, social network, social capital, maps, construction industry, migrant labour, enforcement, construction worker, dissertation, markets, informal economy, Beijing, labour market, employment, migration, variance |
| Subjects: | practitioner, research dissemination and communication, economic analysis, health safety and environment, Geography, economics, spatial and geospatial analysis, management, systems engineering, political science, industry analysis, measurement and scaling, sociology, demography |
| Topics: | Engineering Principles, Geographical Context, Health and Safety, Supply Chain Management, Research Practice, Business Strategy, Governance, Roles and Professions, International Construction, Human Resources, Urban Studies |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here