University of Maryland LibrariesDigital Repository at the University of Maryland
    • Login
    View Item 
    •   DRUM
    • Theses and Dissertations from UMD
    • UMD Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    •   DRUM
    • Theses and Dissertations from UMD
    • UMD Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    RURAL MIGRANT WORKERS’ AGENCY IN CAPITALIST PRODUCTION IN CHINA

    View/Open
    Guo_umd_0117E_19441.pdf (1.162Mb)
    (RESTRICTED ACCESS)
    No. of downloads: 0

    Date
    2018
    Author
    Guo, Yu
    Advisor
    Hill Collins, Patricia H
    DRUM DOI
    https://doi.org/10.13016/56kf-f3hf
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Abstract
    China’s recent economic success largely depends on making more than 100 million rural migrants work in the “world’s factory”. This dissertation investigates why rural migrants work in factories under unappealing conditions from their subjective perspectives. While the literature emphasizes state repression and factory management control, this dissertation proposes that rural migrant workers approach factory work through complicated agency, with agency being defined as the ideas, thoughts, considerations, perceptions, and plans that rural migrant workers bring to factory work. Based on ten months of ethnography in two small manufacturing factories in East China that hired approximately 160 rural migrant workers, this dissertation discusses how the rural migrant workers participated in factory production with thoughts and values that had developed from various sources in their general social lives. The findings have implications for studying and theorizing capital-labor relations in particular and power relations involving domination and exploitation in general.
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/1903/21575
    Collections
    • Sociology Theses and Dissertations
    • UMD Theses and Dissertations

    DRUM is brought to you by the University of Maryland Libraries
    University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-7011 (301)314-1328.
    Please send us your comments.
    Web Accessibility
     

     

    Browse

    All of DRUMCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjects

    My Account

    LoginRegister
    Pages
    About DRUMAbout Download Statistics

    DRUM is brought to you by the University of Maryland Libraries
    University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742-7011 (301)314-1328.
    Please send us your comments.
    Web Accessibility