The impact of citizenship on labour process: state,capital and labour control in South China

Abstract

Sweatshops remain scattered around southern China where scholars have explored the despotic nature of labour control. However, an anomalous case of factory regime was found in Hengfa, a handbag manufacturing factory. This article studies workers’ voluntary and hard-working attitude toward work, the institutional arrangement that organizes such workers’ interests, as well as the broader context that generates workers’ consent toward these institutional arrangements. First, the residential-working compound of Hengfa and the dormitory curfew have shaped the labour process into a game pursuing leisure time outside of the factory. Second, China’s household registration system (hukou) has determined inner-migrant workers’ residential status, making them rely on entrance guards and curfew as a protection for personal safety, and therefore has constructed the workers’ consent toward the curfew. Based on this analysis, a particular type of state-capital interrelation and its effect on the labour process can be found.