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A 'race to the bottom' or variegated work regimes? Industrial relocation, the changing migrant labor regime, and worker agency in China's electronics industry.
- Source :
- Review of International Political Economy; Feb2023, Vol. 30 Issue 1, p359-383, 25p
- Publication Year :
- 2023
-
Abstract
- This article examines how capital/industrial relocation interacts with work regime dynamics through a case study of geographical relocation of four electronics multinationals from China's coastal regions to its interior. Based on fieldwork conducted in Chongqing and Chengdu between 2012 and 2017, I find that a migrant labor regime in coastal regions has shifted to a local-labor based development strategy in western regions when capital moves inland. This shift, I argue, has increased labor agency and given rise to capital's labor control problems and work regime dynamics that are unique to the relocation process and western China. Specifically, rather than a race-to-the-bottom in labor conditions, three distinct work regimes have emerged in the new sites of production, depending on firms' positions in the global production networks (GPNs) and workers' responses/agency embedded in the GPNs and local labor institutions. They are: (1) advanced quality production and negotiated commitment between workers and management; (2) lean-and-dual and fragmented worker discontent; and (3) flexible Taylorism and high-level worker resistance. The evidence highlights the important role of local state in building location-sensitive labor institutions and workers' constrained, varied agency in influencing work regime dynamics, which challenge many assumptions of the race-to-the-bottom argument associated with capital relocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 09692290
- Volume :
- 30
- Issue :
- 1
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- Review of International Political Economy
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 162103191
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2021.2010789