The Precariat in Western China

The Precariat in Western China

Author: Xueyang Ma

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-06-17

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 1040044980

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This book provides a comprehensive picture for understanding the experiences and dynamics of precarious workers’ in-work poverty in western China. The research presented in this book identifies the causes and the consequences of precarious employment and in-work poverty and analyses the stakeholders’ responses to the changes in the context of employment in China's socialist market economy. The book explains why precarious workers tend to remain outsiders to rapid socio-economic transformation and informs readers as to how people make choices, how those with different abilities adapt to the process of de-traditionalisation and how marketisation changes people’s lifestyles, value systems, policy designs. Detailing empirical investigations of the experience and dynamics of workers’ precarious life, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Chinese society, social policy and poverty.


Book Synopsis The Precariat in Western China by : Xueyang Ma

Download or read book The Precariat in Western China written by Xueyang Ma and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-06-17 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a comprehensive picture for understanding the experiences and dynamics of precarious workers’ in-work poverty in western China. The research presented in this book identifies the causes and the consequences of precarious employment and in-work poverty and analyses the stakeholders’ responses to the changes in the context of employment in China's socialist market economy. The book explains why precarious workers tend to remain outsiders to rapid socio-economic transformation and informs readers as to how people make choices, how those with different abilities adapt to the process of de-traditionalisation and how marketisation changes people’s lifestyles, value systems, policy designs. Detailing empirical investigations of the experience and dynamics of workers’ precarious life, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Chinese society, social policy and poverty.

Building China

Building China

Author: Sarah Swider

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2016-02-19

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 1501701711

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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.


Book Synopsis Building China by : Sarah Swider

Download or read book Building China written by Sarah Swider and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-19 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

The Precariat

The Precariat

Author: Guy Standing

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-07-15

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 0755637097

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This book presents the new Precariat – the rapidly growing number of people facing lives of insecurity, on zero hours contracts, moving in and out of jobs that give little meaning to their lives. The delivery driver who brings your packages, the uber driver who gets you to work, the security guard at the mall, the carer looking after our elderly...these are The Precariat. Guy Standing investigates this new and growing group, finding a frustrated and angry new underclass who are often ignored by politicians and economists. The rise of zero hours contracts, encouraged by fat cat corporations as risk-free employment, and by silicon valley as a way of outsourcing costs and responsibility, has been exacerbated by the COVID pandemic. At the same time, in its experience of lockdown, the western world is realizing the true value of these nurses, carers and key workers. The answer? The return of income security and meaningful work - the principles 20th century capitalism was built on. By making the fears and desires of the Precariat central to economic thinking, Standing shows how concepts like Basic Income are not just desirable but inevitable, and plots the way to a better future.


Book Synopsis The Precariat by : Guy Standing

Download or read book The Precariat written by Guy Standing and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-07-15 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the new Precariat – the rapidly growing number of people facing lives of insecurity, on zero hours contracts, moving in and out of jobs that give little meaning to their lives. The delivery driver who brings your packages, the uber driver who gets you to work, the security guard at the mall, the carer looking after our elderly...these are The Precariat. Guy Standing investigates this new and growing group, finding a frustrated and angry new underclass who are often ignored by politicians and economists. The rise of zero hours contracts, encouraged by fat cat corporations as risk-free employment, and by silicon valley as a way of outsourcing costs and responsibility, has been exacerbated by the COVID pandemic. At the same time, in its experience of lockdown, the western world is realizing the true value of these nurses, carers and key workers. The answer? The return of income security and meaningful work - the principles 20th century capitalism was built on. By making the fears and desires of the Precariat central to economic thinking, Standing shows how concepts like Basic Income are not just desirable but inevitable, and plots the way to a better future.

Working-Class Formation

Working-Class Formation

Author: Ira Katznelson

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2021-04-13

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 0691228221

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Applying an original theoretical framework, an international group of historians and social scientists here explores how class, rather than other social bonds, became central to the ideologies, dispositions, and actions of working people, and how this process was translated into diverse institutional legacies and political outcomes. Focusing principally on France. Germany, and the United States, the contributors examine the historically contingent connections between class, as objectively structured and experienced, and collective perceptions and responses as they develop in work, community, and politics. Following Ira Katznelson's introduction of the analytical concepts, William H. Sewell, Jr., Michelle Perrot, and Alain Cottereau discuss France; Amy Bridges and Martin Shefter, the United States; and Jargen Kocka and Mary Nolan, Germany. The conclusion by Aristide R. Zolberg comments on working-class formation up to World War I, including developments in Great Britain, and challenges conventional wisdom about class and politics in the industrializing West.


Book Synopsis Working-Class Formation by : Ira Katznelson

Download or read book Working-Class Formation written by Ira Katznelson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Applying an original theoretical framework, an international group of historians and social scientists here explores how class, rather than other social bonds, became central to the ideologies, dispositions, and actions of working people, and how this process was translated into diverse institutional legacies and political outcomes. Focusing principally on France. Germany, and the United States, the contributors examine the historically contingent connections between class, as objectively structured and experienced, and collective perceptions and responses as they develop in work, community, and politics. Following Ira Katznelson's introduction of the analytical concepts, William H. Sewell, Jr., Michelle Perrot, and Alain Cottereau discuss France; Amy Bridges and Martin Shefter, the United States; and Jargen Kocka and Mary Nolan, Germany. The conclusion by Aristide R. Zolberg comments on working-class formation up to World War I, including developments in Great Britain, and challenges conventional wisdom about class and politics in the industrializing West.

A Precariat Charter

A Precariat Charter

Author: Guy Standing

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2014-04-10

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 1472507983

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This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Guy Standing's immensely influential 2011 book introduced the Precariat as an emerging mass class, characterized by inequality and insecurity. Standing outlined the increasingly global nature of the Precariat as a social phenomenon, especially in the light of the social unrest characterized by the Occupy movements. He outlined the political risks they might pose, and at what might be done to diminish inequality and allow such workers to find a more stable labour identity. His concept and his conclusions have been widely taken up by thinkers from Noam Chomsky to Zygmunt Bauman, by political activists and by policy-makers. This new book takes the debate a stage further, looking in more detail at the kind of progressive politics that might form the vision of a Good Society in which such inequality, and the instability it produces, is reduced. A Precariat Charter discusses how rights - political, civil, social and economic - have been denied to the Precariat, and argues for the importance of redefining our social contract around notions of associational freedom, agency and the commons.


Book Synopsis A Precariat Charter by : Guy Standing

Download or read book A Precariat Charter written by Guy Standing and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-04-10 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Guy Standing's immensely influential 2011 book introduced the Precariat as an emerging mass class, characterized by inequality and insecurity. Standing outlined the increasingly global nature of the Precariat as a social phenomenon, especially in the light of the social unrest characterized by the Occupy movements. He outlined the political risks they might pose, and at what might be done to diminish inequality and allow such workers to find a more stable labour identity. His concept and his conclusions have been widely taken up by thinkers from Noam Chomsky to Zygmunt Bauman, by political activists and by policy-makers. This new book takes the debate a stage further, looking in more detail at the kind of progressive politics that might form the vision of a Good Society in which such inequality, and the instability it produces, is reduced. A Precariat Charter discusses how rights - political, civil, social and economic - have been denied to the Precariat, and argues for the importance of redefining our social contract around notions of associational freedom, agency and the commons.

Caring in Times of Precarity

Caring in Times of Precarity

Author: Chow Yiu Fai

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-12-14

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 3319768980

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Caring in Times of Precarity draws together two key cultural observations: the increase in those living a single life, and the growing attraction of creative careers. Straddling this historical juncture, the book focuses on one particular group of ‘precariat’: single women in Shanghai in various forms of creative (self-)employment. While negotiating their share of the uncanny creative work ethos, these women also find themselves interpellated as shengnü (‘left-over women’) in a society configured by a mix of Confucian values, heterosexual ideals, and global images of womanhood. Following these women’s professional, social and intimate lives, the book refuses to see their singlehood and creative labour as problematic, and them as victims. It departs from dominant thinking on precarity, which foregrounds and critiques the contemporary need to be flexible, mobile, and spontaneous to the extent of (self-)exploitation, accepting insecurity. The book seeks to understand– empirically and specifically–women’s everyday struggles and pleasures. It highlights the up-close, everyday embodied, affective, and subjective experience in a particular Chinese city, with broader, global resonances well beyond China. Exploring the limits of the politics of precarity, the book proposes an ethics of care.


Book Synopsis Caring in Times of Precarity by : Chow Yiu Fai

Download or read book Caring in Times of Precarity written by Chow Yiu Fai and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-12-14 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Caring in Times of Precarity draws together two key cultural observations: the increase in those living a single life, and the growing attraction of creative careers. Straddling this historical juncture, the book focuses on one particular group of ‘precariat’: single women in Shanghai in various forms of creative (self-)employment. While negotiating their share of the uncanny creative work ethos, these women also find themselves interpellated as shengnü (‘left-over women’) in a society configured by a mix of Confucian values, heterosexual ideals, and global images of womanhood. Following these women’s professional, social and intimate lives, the book refuses to see their singlehood and creative labour as problematic, and them as victims. It departs from dominant thinking on precarity, which foregrounds and critiques the contemporary need to be flexible, mobile, and spontaneous to the extent of (self-)exploitation, accepting insecurity. The book seeks to understand– empirically and specifically–women’s everyday struggles and pleasures. It highlights the up-close, everyday embodied, affective, and subjective experience in a particular Chinese city, with broader, global resonances well beyond China. Exploring the limits of the politics of precarity, the book proposes an ethics of care.

Privileged Precariat

Privileged Precariat

Author: Danelle van Zyl-Hermann

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2021-04-15

Total Pages: 359

ISBN-13: 1108923968

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A rethinking of South Africa's recent past, this book presents unique historical evidence of white working-class responses to the dismantling of apartheid and establishment of majority rule in South Africa, from the 1970s to present, placing this in the context of global debates on neoliberalism and identity politics.


Book Synopsis Privileged Precariat by : Danelle van Zyl-Hermann

Download or read book Privileged Precariat written by Danelle van Zyl-Hermann and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-15 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rethinking of South Africa's recent past, this book presents unique historical evidence of white working-class responses to the dismantling of apartheid and establishment of majority rule in South Africa, from the 1970s to present, placing this in the context of global debates on neoliberalism and identity politics.

Educating Migrant Children in China

Educating Migrant Children in China

Author: Chengqi Cao

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-08-27

Total Pages: 173

ISBN-13: 1040126936

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This book explores social citizenship through the lens of investigating local compulsory education policy targeting migrant children in Beijing and Guangzhou. Deploying a multi-case methodology, this book illustrates how these two local governments respond to central decisions on compulsory education for migrant children, the implementation models they employ and the impact of this unique practice on social citizenship boundary redefinition through single- and cross-case analysis. It helps readers understand the evolution of compulsory education policy and its effects on access to schooling for migrant children and clearly illustrates this policy’s implications for social citizenship. Revealing the important relationship between the central and lower levels of government in China, this book will appeal to students and scholars of education, social policy, as well as those with an interest in Chinese culture and society.


Book Synopsis Educating Migrant Children in China by : Chengqi Cao

Download or read book Educating Migrant Children in China written by Chengqi Cao and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-08-27 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores social citizenship through the lens of investigating local compulsory education policy targeting migrant children in Beijing and Guangzhou. Deploying a multi-case methodology, this book illustrates how these two local governments respond to central decisions on compulsory education for migrant children, the implementation models they employ and the impact of this unique practice on social citizenship boundary redefinition through single- and cross-case analysis. It helps readers understand the evolution of compulsory education policy and its effects on access to schooling for migrant children and clearly illustrates this policy’s implications for social citizenship. Revealing the important relationship between the central and lower levels of government in China, this book will appeal to students and scholars of education, social policy, as well as those with an interest in Chinese culture and society.

Platforms and Cultural Production

Platforms and Cultural Production

Author: Thomas Poell

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2021-10-14

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 1509540520

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The widespread uptake of digital platforms – from YouTube and Instagram to Twitch and TikTok – is reconfiguring cultural production in profound, complex, and highly uneven ways. Longstanding media industries are experiencing tremendous upheaval, while new industrial formations – live-streaming, social media influencing, and podcasting, among others – are evolving at breakneck speed. Poell, Nieborg, and Duffy explore both the processes and the implications of platformization across the cultural industries, identifying key changes in markets, infrastructures, and governance at play in this ongoing transformation, as well as pivotal shifts in the practices of labor, creativity, and democracy. The authors foreground three particular industries – news, gaming, and social media creation – and also draw upon examples from music, advertising, and more. Diverse in its geographic scope, Platforms and Cultural Production builds on the latest research and accounts from across North America, Western Europe, Southeast Asia, and China to reveal crucial differences and surprising parallels in the trajectories of platformization across the globe. Offering a novel conceptual framework grounded in illuminating case studies, this book is essential for students, scholars, policymakers, and practitioners seeking to understand how the institutions and practices of cultural production are transforming – and what the stakes are for understanding platform power.


Book Synopsis Platforms and Cultural Production by : Thomas Poell

Download or read book Platforms and Cultural Production written by Thomas Poell and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-10-14 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The widespread uptake of digital platforms – from YouTube and Instagram to Twitch and TikTok – is reconfiguring cultural production in profound, complex, and highly uneven ways. Longstanding media industries are experiencing tremendous upheaval, while new industrial formations – live-streaming, social media influencing, and podcasting, among others – are evolving at breakneck speed. Poell, Nieborg, and Duffy explore both the processes and the implications of platformization across the cultural industries, identifying key changes in markets, infrastructures, and governance at play in this ongoing transformation, as well as pivotal shifts in the practices of labor, creativity, and democracy. The authors foreground three particular industries – news, gaming, and social media creation – and also draw upon examples from music, advertising, and more. Diverse in its geographic scope, Platforms and Cultural Production builds on the latest research and accounts from across North America, Western Europe, Southeast Asia, and China to reveal crucial differences and surprising parallels in the trajectories of platformization across the globe. Offering a novel conceptual framework grounded in illuminating case studies, this book is essential for students, scholars, policymakers, and practitioners seeking to understand how the institutions and practices of cultural production are transforming – and what the stakes are for understanding platform power.

The Cinema of the Precariat

The Cinema of the Precariat

Author: Thomas Zaniello

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2020-02-20

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 1501349228

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The Cinema of the Precariat is the first book to lay out the incredible range of the precariat (the social class suffering from precarity) as well as a detailed report on the cinematic record of their work and lives.It discusses a thorough and definitive selection of more than 250 films and related visual media that take the measure of the precariat worldwide. For example, thousands of Haitians, including children, harvest sugar cane in the Dominican Republic (The Price of Sugar), while illegal Afghan refugees work in Iran (Delbaran). More familiar are the millions of Latino immigrants, legal or not, of all ages, that work in the United States (Food Chains). Each chapter focuses on a sub-class of the precariat or a contested zone of labor or the evolving political manifestation of the struggles of the unorganized and the dispossessed. Among the hundreds of bewildering film choices available nowadays this book offers the reader reliable guidance to the films bringing to life the economic, political, and social dilemmas faced by millions of the world's global workforce and their families.


Book Synopsis The Cinema of the Precariat by : Thomas Zaniello

Download or read book The Cinema of the Precariat written by Thomas Zaniello and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2020-02-20 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cinema of the Precariat is the first book to lay out the incredible range of the precariat (the social class suffering from precarity) as well as a detailed report on the cinematic record of their work and lives.It discusses a thorough and definitive selection of more than 250 films and related visual media that take the measure of the precariat worldwide. For example, thousands of Haitians, including children, harvest sugar cane in the Dominican Republic (The Price of Sugar), while illegal Afghan refugees work in Iran (Delbaran). More familiar are the millions of Latino immigrants, legal or not, of all ages, that work in the United States (Food Chains). Each chapter focuses on a sub-class of the precariat or a contested zone of labor or the evolving political manifestation of the struggles of the unorganized and the dispossessed. Among the hundreds of bewildering film choices available nowadays this book offers the reader reliable guidance to the films bringing to life the economic, political, and social dilemmas faced by millions of the world's global workforce and their families.