Skip to main content

Resisting Governance: Production of Rural Migrants’ Selves

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Manufacturing Towns in China
  • 287 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter turns the research focus from authorities’ governance to migrant resistance. It examines the patterns and typologies of resistance and the production of migrants’ selves as a unique way of resistance. By producing their own identities, migrants mitigate authorities’ claims or advance their own, weakening manufacturing production and triggering authorities’ alteration of their governance techniques.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Bradsher, Keith, and David Barboza. 2010. “Strike in China Highlights Gap in Workers’ Pay.” Reuters, May 28. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/business/global/29honda.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.

  • Browne, Andrew. 2011. “Wave of Unrest Rocks China: Threats to Social Order Increasingly Hit Cities, Bringing Iron-Fist Response.” The Wall Street Journal, June 14. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304665904576383142907232726.html.

  • Butollo, Florian, and Tobias ten Brink. 2012. “Challenging the Automization of Discontent: Patterns of Migrant-Worker Protest in China During the Series of Strikes in 2010.” Critical Asian Studies 44 (3): 419–440.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • DIPC. 2008. “Dongguan Jingji Shehui Shuang Zhuan Xing Shiqi De Sifa Zhicheng” (The Law and Its Enforcement in the Socioeconomic Transformation in Dongguan). In Dongguan 30 Nian (Thirty Years in Dongguan), edited by Daoping Wang, 277–294. Guangzhou: Guangdong People’s Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • DSB. 2015. Dongguan Statistical Yearbook 2014. Beijing: China Statistics Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fei, Xiaotong. 1946. Peasant Life in China: A Field Study of Country Life in the Yangtze Valley. New York: Oxford University Press, 1946.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fei, Xiaotong, Gary G. Hamilton, and Zheng Wang. 1992. From the Soil, the Foundations of Chinese Society: A Translation of Fei Xiaotong’s Xiangtu Zhongguo, with an Introduction and Epilogue. Berkeley: University of California Press (Original work written in Chinese published in 1948).

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, Michel. 1978. The History of Sexuality, vol. I. New York: Pantheon Books (Original work published in 1976).

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, Michel, Luther Martin, Huck Gutman, and Patrick Hutton. 1988. Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gao, Mobo C.F. 1994. “On Their Own: The Plight of Migrant Workers.” China Rights Forum (Fall): 4–28.

    Google Scholar 

  • Government of Dongguan. 2011. Dongcheng He Dalingshan Zhen Jifen Ruhu Qingkuang Diaoyan Baogao (Survey Report of Point Test for Local Hukou in Dongcheng and Dalingshan).

    Google Scholar 

  • ITFS. 2010. Liangan Sandi Gaoxiao Fushikang Diaoyan Zong Baogao (The Foxconn Suicides Report of Several Universities in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan).

    Google Scholar 

  • Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. Critique of Everyday Life. London; New York: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Li, Peilin. 2003. “Social Network of Rural Migrants in China.” Social Sciences 24 (4): 138–148.

    Google Scholar 

  • Liu, Jianhua. 2011. “Nanhai Bentian Gongzi Jiti Xieshang an Shi Mo” (Collective Bargain in the Honda Strike in Nanhai). Xiaokang 135 (8): 98–101.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marx, Karl, Friedrich Engels, and Samuel Moore. 1952. Capital. Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica (Original work published in 1867).

    Google Scholar 

  • NBSC. 2010. 2009 Nian Nongmingong Jiance Diaocha Baogao (Survey Report of Rural Migrant Workers 2009).

    Google Scholar 

  • NBSC. 2013. 2012 Nian Nongmingong Jiance Diaocha Baogao (Survey Report of Rural Migrant Workers 2012).

    Google Scholar 

  • NBSC. 2017. 2016 Nian Nongmingong Jiance Diaocha Baogao (Survey Report of Rural Migrant Workers 2016).

    Google Scholar 

  • Olick, Tom. 2011. “Unrest Grows as Economy Booms.” The Wall Street Journal, September 26. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303499204576389453425121490.html.

  • Page, Jeremy. 2011. “Unease in ‘Happy Guangdong’: Disgruntled Migrants Dent Image Party Chief Wants to Project in China’s Manufacturing Center.” The Wall Street Journal, June 18. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303499204576389453425121490.html.

  • People’s Daily. 2011. “Guangdong Liudong Renkou Fuwu De Dongguan Moshi” (Dongguan Model of Serving Floating Population in Guangdong). The People’s Net, August 2. http://gd.people.com.cn/GB/123935/123955/15307642.html.

  • Pun, Ngai. 2005. Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace. Durham, NC; Hong Kong: Duke University Press; Hong Kong University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pun, Ngai, Huilin Lu, and Huipeng Zhang. 2012. Da Gongdi: Jianzhuye Nongmingong De Shengcun Tujing (Big Construction Site: Rural Migrant Workers’ Life in the Building and Construction Industry). Beijing: Peking University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rose, Nikolas S. 1999. Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Scott, James C. 1985. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Solinger, Dorothy. 1999. Contesting Citizenship in Urban China: Peasant Migrants, the State, and the Logic of the Market. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sudworth, John. 2012. “Migrant Workers and Locals Clash in China Town.” The BBC, June 27. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-18605502.

  • Tang, Didi. 2015. “China’s 168 Million Migrant Workers Are Discovering Their Labor Rights.” Business Insider, April 6. http://www.businessinsider.com/chinas-168-million-migrant-workers-are-discovering-their-labor-rights-2015-4.

  • Whyte, Martin King, ed. 2010. One Country, Two Societies: Rural-Urban Inequality in Contemporary China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wong, Chun Han. 2016. “As Labor Unrest Looms, China Vows to Target Deadbeat Employers.” The Wall Street Journal, January 20. http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2016/01/20/as-labor-unrest-looms-china-vows-to-target-deadbeat-employers/.

  • Wu, Jieh-min. 2010. “Rural Migrant Workers and China’s Differential Citizenship: A Comparative Institutional Analysis.” In One Country, Two Societies: Rural-Urban Inequality in Contemporary China, edited by Martin King Whyte, 55–81. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zhang, Li. 2001. Strangers in the City: Reconfigurations of Space, Power, and Social Networks Within China’s Floating Population. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yue Gong .

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Gong, Y. (2019). Resisting Governance: Production of Rural Migrants’ Selves. In: Manufacturing Towns in China. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3372-9_8

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3372-9_8

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-13-3371-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-13-3372-9

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics