Learning the knacks of actually existing capitalism: Young Beijing migrants and the problem of value

Abstract

Chinese migrant workers make up the key manual workforce of global capitalist production, but they are barely integrated into either Chinese state narratives or global capitalism’s self-representation. In Chinese they are known as the floating population because they dwell outside the modernist state grid and remain largely unrecognised by the state. This article addresses the labour experiences and developmental aspirations of young Beijing migrants. While they are shown to frame development in the terminology used in state policies, I argue that state conceptions of ideal citizenship are in fact felt to be of little relevance. Their struggle to develop is better understood in relation to a materialist logic of sale of labour, imprinting upon them that their wages equal their worth. To appreciate their aspirations, I argue, we should realise that migrant workers were never successfully integrated into state ideology and therefore restore attention to the subjectivising effects of the labour market.