中欧社会论坛 - China Europa ForumSpace politics in transnational labour process : The dormitory labour regime in the era of globalisation
Authors: Ren Yan, Pan Yi
Date: 2006
Published by Sociological Studies No. 4
Abstract: This paper discusses the dormitory labour regime, a system specific to China in the globalization era. And one that provides us with a unique angle for viewing and studying the transnational labour process. The paper aims to observe this process and carry out theoretical research on the present dormitory labour regime in China as a form of production space from the political-economic standpoint. By reviewing the history of the dormitory labour regime, the paper summarises some of its general characteristics and its influence in shaping China’s new working class. It attempts to understand the reconstruction and intermeshing of the production space and the daily reproduction space in the transnational labour process by extrapolating the dual operations of state and capital. The author considers that the dormitory labour regime, the product of the transnational labour process, reintegrates the dual operations of capital and state at micro level, i.e. in the specific production space. It closely connects the production space of products and daily reproduction space of the labour force. The underlying capitalist economic logic is to maximize surplus value by controlling the labour producing process. The state’s political logic is to achieve industrialisation and urbanisation by efficiently controlling the flow of workers without taking charge of the re-production of the labour force. The existing household registration system and the new labour control system have resulted in a special form of power. On the one hand industrialisation and urbanisation require a rural population to work in urban factories. On the other hand, the household registration system of cities hinders the formation of a working class by making it impossible for workers to settle down in them and build their own communities. As a result, the dormitory regime makes it possible for capital to fully control the daily reproduction of the labour force, and workers to give a maximum service to the production process. The dormitory labour regime as a new form of social space, emerges with globalization’s outsourcing of production. It connects a highly abstract capitalist space with a concrete and specific production one. The regime constitutes a new form of labour management and provides new outlets for the emergence of labour solidarity, resistance and changed labour relations by giving full play to the dialectical relations between labour control and resistant to that control in transnational labour process. Both capitalist and workers will reinforce their powers by consciously controlling this space. In that sense, dormitory space is very specific and well entrenched. As a unique production space, the political, economical and cultural significance of dormitory labour regime in the transnational labour process requires in-depth and systematic research.
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- English: doc_436.pdf (110 KiB)
- Chinese: doc_437.pdf (69 KiB)
- French: doc_435.pdf (110 KiB)