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.