Between Fields and Factories: The Rural Roots of Hyper-Flexible Employment in China

• In Event: 40403 - Emergent Horizons in the Capitalist World-System in Crisis

Abstract

This paper explores the phenomenon of “hyper-flexible employment,” wherein many rural migrant workers in China’s manufacturing sector deliberately embrace high job turnover and avoid formal contracts. Based on ethnographic research tracing labor migration between a manufacturing hub in China’s coastal region and a remote county in Southwest China’s mountainous rural areas, the study underscores how rural ties and semi-proletarian conditions gave workers agency to navigate between wage labor and rural livelihoods. It argues that the rise of hyper-flexible employment is driven as much by workers’ aspirations and preferences as by structural forces. By reconceptualizing working-class formation through the metaphor of a Möbius strip, the paper sheds light on the connections between agrarian change and labor politics.

Authors

• Guowei Liang, Johns Hopkins University

• Beverly Judith Silver, Johns Hopkins University