Durable Precarity: The Role of Interdependence and Shared Identities in Convergent Justifications

• In Event: 30426 - Cultural Processes of Worker Mobilization

Abstract

Despite some success in resolving specific grievances, labor activism in China has not been successful in creating long-lasting and widespread changes in worker protections. Why workers struggle to resist precarity they face is an important question. Building on existing explanations related to economic development, government control, and merit-based inequality, this article offers another explanation—convergent justifications, which mean that different stakeholders justify the existence and persistence of precarity from different perspectives, and they endorse one another’s views, leading to collective acceptance of the situation. Using interviews and archival data from China, I show that state actors, employers, and employees with different levels of job security justify the prevalence and persistence of precarious work and job inequality from different perspectives corresponding to their social positions. Interdependence and shared identities among these stakeholders make them endorse one another’s justifications, increasing the difficulty of mobilizing support to alleviate precarity in practice.

Author

• Yue Qin, University of Wisconsin-Madison