Incomplete Proletarianization of Rural Migrant Workers in China: Structural Analysis and Subjective Understanding

• In Event: 121 - Section on Marxist Sociology Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 06. Social Movements II

Abstract

Guided by a structural and historical analysis of the rural migrant workers in China, this research seeks to investigate how the rural migrant workers themselves understand their life and work situations, through in-depth fieldwork carried out in three factories in China. The research purpose is two-fold. First, even though theories of "incomplete proletarianization" help us grasp the essence of the structural forces that shape rural migrant workers' dominated social positions, we will only achieve a proper understanding of the phenomenon with learning how the inequality is realized or maintained with the workers’ daily conscious participation. Second, comparing the rural migrant workers' subjective understanding of their situations with the structural analysis of them imposed by the scholars will also lead to a critical review of the interactions between academic structural construction of social phenomena and subjectivities of social agents.

Author

• Yu Guo, University of Maryland, College Park