A Study of Socio-spatial Segregation of Rural Migrants in Shenzhen

To decode cities, Robert Park brought two issues into consideration, segregation and migration, which are also key to understanding the Global South cities today, such as Shenzhen, the laboratory of post-reform China. Similar to Chicago, Shenzhen is a well-known prospering ‘migrant city’, where we identified marked sociospatial segregation of rural migrants. Unlike Chicago, however, the segregation of migrants in Shenzhen is largely determined by some institutional factors such as hukou system, the urban and rural dualism, and its ‘world factory’ regime. Moreover, through the examination of Shenzhen’s Foxconn complex, we identified some difficulties encountered by migrants in integrating into Shenzhen or returning to their hometowns, that is, becoming either urbanities or returnees. Rural migrants have been stuck in a specific status of in- between urban and rural. This supports the argument of Park who stated that the city is a ‘psychophysical mechanism’, in which physical space and human sentiments interact. From Chicago in 1916 to Shenzhen in 2016, the segregation of migrants is still a major challenge for cities to address.

Theory and State of the Research

This chapter discusses the state of the current research on workplace consent in authoritarian states. It reviews the existing empirical studies of factory regimes in Russia and China and existing theories of workplace consent. The core of the chapter focuses on developing the theoretical approach used in the study. This approach centers on three consent-generation mechanisms: socialization, incentives, and participation. Taken together, these mechanisms are referred to as the factory regime. Based on the assumption that participation mechanisms are absent or underdeveloped in authoritarian societies, the chapter develops the thesis that, to generate consent and compensate for the lack of participation, authoritarian societies need to rely on very intensive organizational socialization processes (including social engineering) and material incentives.

Familial Consent

This paper elaborates a new source of Chinese workplace consent based on participant observation of the Baigou bag industry. Different from other types of Chinese workplace consent that are based on state, gender or citizenship, Baigou’s worker consent comes from a particular factory regime—Familial Household Production—rooted in Chinese rural households. The principle of familialism manifests itself in the labour market, work organisation and reproduction of labour, and it maintains worker loyalty, which is deeper than normal worker consent. Three sub-types of the familial household production regime were distinguished: patriarchal factory regime, paternalistic factory regime and patrimonial factory regime.

Gender and Caste at Work: Evolution of a Factory Regime Under the Sumangali Scheme

The feminisation of labour practised by the spinning industry in Tamil Nadu in the name of the Sumangali Scheme is based on a highly exploitative labour arrangement of employing girls belonging to socio-economically deprived sections. Using a socially sensitive factory regime approach developed by Ching Kwan Lee, this article brings to light changes that are underway in a prominent mill that has been the target of NGO activism. The findings show that a highly despotic factory regime has slowly transformed into a hegemonic regime premised on the reconstruction of the employer as a benevolent patron. The study unravels the complex intersection of caste and gender in shaping the new factory regime.

Industrial Restructuring, Local Politics and the Reproduction of Labour Power: Some Theoretical Considerations

The industrial restructuring thesis is criticised for offering too limited an explanation of local political consequences. A more elaborate model is developed to connect industrial change and local political behaviour. Burawoy's concept of factory regime and Castells' analysis of collective consumption are scrutinised to establish connections between production processes, labour-market conditions, patterns in the reproduction of labour power, and local political practices. These links are illustrated empirically by reference to a local case-study of a town in northwest England. The model is developed in terms of the operation of three mechanisms which underlie local political practices: factory regime, local labour-market, and mode of the provision of services.