Rurality and Labor Process Autonomy

Abstract

This article examines the experiences of baomu in the Mao era and in the post-Mao era China. While baomu conducted their work in the form of wage labor and have been subjected to similar structural inequality as domestic workers, significant differences exist in the relations and processes of labor and bear out the political epistemic differences between the two eras. Central to my examination is whether domestic workers have autonomy in their labor process and what structural and ideological conditions enable or disable their autonomy. I argue that valorization or denigration of rurality played a key role to enable or disable labor process autonomy. To draw connections and disconnections between domestic service in the two eras and to capture China' transition to postsocialism, I suggest that migrant domestic workers' subsumption to wage labor was formal in the Mao era and real in the post-Mao era.