Search

Through the in-depth analysis of the features of Huabei rural industrialization, the unique factory regime in Baigou, Hebei, and the resulting special workers, this paper reveals two dilemmas the migrant workers in Baigou and larger Hubei area face: Because of the interpersonal network of labor market, personalized trade, familial labor process, and patrimonial management, the workers are unable to become either industrial working class or citizens. Facing this special group of workers, we still believe in their power of self-liberation. Drawing on Touraine's action sociology and sociological intervention, and Burawoy's public sociology and praxis-oriented research, we modify "sociological intervention" according to the reality of Chinese society and propose the methodology of "strong sociological intervention" whose vehicle is "Baigou Migrant Worker Night School." The night school provided workers with courses of labor law, English, and computer based on their actual needs. Labor law is the core to evoke the self-consciousness of the workers. Through communications in the night school and workers' real living circumstances, we collected their true information and treated it as the source of sociological knowledge. After three sessions of night school training, workers showed changes in skills, social, and psychological aspects, laying a foundation for the growth of self-consciousness.

Abstract: Despite the government''s active legislation to protect workers, labor rights still remain widely ignored and poorly enforced in China. Structural constrains, such as the state''s development strategy biased on efficiency over equity, tight labor markets, and the lack of an effective safety net, cannot fully explain why Chinese workers have had so little impact on the environment in which they work and the violations of their rights often occur. Using Marshall''s theory of citizenship rights, this article explores the structure of China''s labor rights for an explanation. It argues that while Chinese labor legislation stipulates workers'' individual rights regarding contracts, wages, working conditions, pensions, and so on, it fails to provide them with collective rights, namely the rights to organize, to strike, and to bargain collectively in a meaningful sense. The lack of collective rights is one of the major factors that render workers'' individual rights vulnerable, hollow, unenforceable, or often disregarded. Labor legislation that enables workers to act collectively is crucial for safeguarding their individual rights. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Primarily based on fieldwork conducted in Shandong province, this paper attempts to explore the social and political implications of the presence of foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs)--particularly those funded by entrepreneurs from other East Asian countries--in China and specifically the impact that these enterprises have on the role of the Chinese state & the field of labor. Major findings are as follows. The presence of FIEs has changed the landscape of Chinese industrial relations by introducing a new and typical wage labor relationship, which has been characterized by conflict between labor and management. Such conflict has helped reshape the state's role in the field of labor relations. Instead of relying on direct arbitrary administrative intervention as it did in handling labor relations in the pre-reform years, the Chinese state has since been compelled to establish and use new labor institutions such as labor laws and trade unions to regulate labor relations in FIEs. With new labor institutions emerging, the state gradually came to play the role of referee rather than player or intruder in the domain of labor-capital relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]