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Manufacturing Towns in China

The Governance of Rural Migrant Workers

  • Book
  • © 2019

Overview

Authors:
  1. Yue Gong

    1. Shenzhen Graduate School, Peking University, Shenzhen, China

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  • Offers a rich empirical study of the political rationales, interactions, strategies, and tactics of authorities in recruiting migrant workers from non-factory areas as cheap labour

  • Highlights public space as a governing tool and shows how authorities shape space to facilitate governance

  • Provides an original descriptive theoretical model of the governance of rural migrants in China

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Table of contents (9 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xix
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  2. Introduction: Governance, Rural Migrants, and Manufacturing Towns

    • Yue Gong
    Pages 1-23

  4. Transformation of Manufacturing Towns

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 83-83
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    2. Retail Streets: Recruiting Low-Skilled Migrants in Villages

      • Yue Gong
      Pages 85-109

    3. Rental Housing: Surveillance of Rural Migrants

      • Yue Gong
      Pages 111-140

    4. Central Squares: Guiding Rural Migrants in Planned Public Space

      • Yue Gong
      Pages 141-175

  6. Back Matter

    Pages 267-284
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Keywords

About this book

This book offers an engaging and unique view of the governance of Chinese rural migrants in non-factory areas of manufacturing towns. By asking how authorities govern migrants as an ongoing source of cheap labor, this book demonstrates and interprets authorities’ power exercised in the form of governing rationalities, regulations, programs, activities, and designated non-factory spaces—town and village centers and migrant living zones. These power exercises take place routinely in migrants’ everyday lives but typically veil themselves, producing knowledge that legitimates our understanding of migrants. Based on their power exercises, authorities’ governance of migrants, like multiple “invisible filters” that select and help create migrant labor in non-factory areas, leads to an inclusion of a certain number of migrants as cheap factory workers and an exclusion of the rest. Nevertheless, by exercising their unique power techniques, migrants can resist and alter authority governance; thus the authorities’ power exercises are deficient and may ultimately be futile. This book details these power exercises, offers rewarding insights, and can greatly enrich our understanding of China’s local governance of migrants and migrant resistance.

Reviews

“It will be best appreciated by readers with a solid background on China who will better understand the nuance and terminology used throughout the book (for instance Marxist references to mass-line work). … this book offers a new perspective on power relations between migrants and their governing authorities, with emphasis on the latter.” (Denise Hare, China Information, Vol. 34 (1), 2020)

“The book Manufacturing Towns in China weaves together various actors, policies and regulations, governance technologies, adaptations and resistances and develops an insightful and well-elaborated argument on the ‘invisible filter’ of the territorial governance in China. … Readers are guided through a journey of different events in the past as well as in the present, in the West as well as in the East and among socialists as well as capitalists.” (June Wang, Eurasian Geography and Economics, July 16, 2019)

“This book offers a welcome intervention into the literature on rural-to-urban migration by taking space and scale seriously as components of power. Those interested in how non-factory spaces and local authorities are central to the management, discipline and policing of migrant labor should read this compelling book.” (Professor Lisa Hoffman, University of Washington Tacoma, USA)

“Yue Gong’s book contributes to unveiling a forgotten and yet illuminating space where a variety of everyday practices and resistances can be explored. This book discloses power and resistance, an excellent work appealing to readers concerned with space, migration and labor in China.” (Professor Ngai Pun, University of Hong Kong, Author of Made in China and Migrant Labor in China)

“This well-organized book is an excellent work in presenting many first-hand materials about the governance of rural migrants as cheap labor and a detailed analysis of the social fabric of manufacturing towns.” (Chunbing Xing, Professor of Economics, Beijing Normal University, China)

Authors and Affiliations

  • Shenzhen Graduate School, Peking University, Shenzhen, China

    Yue Gong

About the author

Yue Ray Gong is Assistant Professor at the School of Urban Planning and Design at Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School. His research focuses on urban governance and migration, housing and community, and periurban areas of China.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Manufacturing Towns in China

  • Book Subtitle: The Governance of Rural Migrant Workers

  • Authors: Yue Gong

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3372-9

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Singapore

  • eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-981-13-3371-2Published: 17 January 2019

  • eBook ISBN: 978-981-13-3372-9Published: 29 December 2018

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XIX, 284

  • Number of Illustrations: 6 b/w illustrations, 11 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: Human Geography, Urban Studies/Sociology

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