This interdisciplinary study investigates the unique challenges faced by migrant workers in the market socialist countries of China and Vietnam. 

The labor of hundreds of millions of internal migrant workers plays a crucial role for China and Vietnam’s national development and the expansion of global production chains in these market socialist countries. As the Communist party states have been promoting both marketization and welfare expansion since their respective reforms began, contradictions between the commodification and social protection of labor lead to significant obstacles to migrant workers’ welfare and well-being in the post-reform era.

Bringing into focus the connection between the reconfiguration of labor and changes in the two countries’ welfare systems, Migrant Labour in Global Factories analyzes how these contradictions shape the care of their huge migrant labor forces. It explores how they unfold in the historical and political contexts of both countries, bringing a range of relevant theories about welfare and social policymaking to bear on the features of the market socialist economy. The book argues that the evolving welfare systems in China and Vietnam fail to meaningfully address the social consequences of labor commodification in contexts where neoliberal development is instrumentalized to serve the political control and legitimacy of the party states. This is often at the cost of long-term and sustainable social policies for migrant labor in global factories.

Jake Lin is assistant professor of political science at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley. He is an associate editor for the Journal of Labor and Society. He is the author of Chinese Politics and Labor Movements. He is the coeditor for two special issues and author of articles appearing in journals such as positions: asia critique, Journal of Labor and Society, Global Public Policy and Governance, Journal of Contemporary Asia, and Socialism and Democracy. Minh T.N. Nguyen is professor of social anthropology at Bielefeld University in Germany. She is the author of Vietnam’s Socialist Servants and Waste and Wealth. She is coeditor of Rural Life in Late Socialism, Reconfiguring Vietnam, and The Contradictions of Market Socialism, as well as special issues for journals such as positions: asia critique and Global Social Policy. Nguyen is the Principal Investigator of the European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant project WelfareStruggles and the ERC Consolidator Grant project FinancialLives. Jingyu Mao is a lecturer at the University of Edinburgh. She has published in sociology and China studies journals such as China Quarterly, China Perspectives, Emotions and Society, and Families, Relationships, and Societies. She coedited two special issues published in Global Social Policy and Journal of Political Sociology. She has published a monograph titled Intimacy as a Lens on Work and Migration.

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Acknowledgements

1 Introduction: migrant labour in global factories under market socialism

2 Conceptualising the politics of care: labour, welfare and government

3 Land development, labour commodification and the restructuring of welfare

4 Liberalising household registration, precaritising labour and commodifying social reproduction

5 Changing labour laws, individualisation of rights and flexibilisation of labour

6 Fiscal systems, welfare and the social reproduction of labour

7 Labour, welfare and government: unravelling the social contract under market socialism

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