Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-31T15:57:43.210Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Mobile Phone Use among Migrant Factory Workers in South China: Technologies of Power and Resistance*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 July 2013

Yinni Peng  and
Susanne Y. P. Choi
Yinni Peng*
Affiliation:
Hong Kong Baptist University.
Susanne Y. P. Choi
Affiliation:
The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
*
Email: [email protected] (corresponding author).
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Comparing ethnographic and interview data in three contrasting production arrangements in a labour-intensive factory in South China, this article argues that while the mobile phone constitutes a new contested terrain on the shop floor and facilitates control and resistance between capital and labour simultaneously, the dynamics of control and resistance is contingent upon the exact arrangements of production. While the management strictly prohibit line operators in the assembly line department from using their mobile phones, they turn a blind eye towards mobile phone use among workers in the hardware department, and mandate mobile workers who are not fixed at work stations in both departments to use mobile phones. Diverse managerial control tactics have generated different patterns of worker resistance. Workers in the assembly line department employ strategies to evade managerial surveillance and continue to use mobile phones at work covertly. They also contest the double standards of mobile phone use displayed by the management. Workers in the hardware department challenge the boundaries of legitimate mobile phone use, and mobile workers use tactics to escape being tracked down by the management via their mobile phones. Mobile phones also facilitate the strategy of resistance through exit among all workers.

Keywords

managerial controlworker resistancelabour politicsmobile phone usemigrant workersSouth China
Type
Articles
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 215 , September 2013 , pp. 553 - 571
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This research was supported by the Chinese University of Hong Kong. We thank our respondents at the Da factory who spent time answering our endless questions and enquiries. We also thank Michael Biggs, Aihwa Ong, Pun Ngan, Lui Tai-lok and Stephen Chiu for their comments. The first author collected the data, and both authors contributed equally to the writing of this paper.

References

Bain, Peter, and Taylor, Phil. 2000. “Entrapped by the ‘electronic panopticon’? Worker resistance in the call centre.” New Technology, Work and Employment 15(1), 2–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barboza, David, and Bradsher, Keith. 2010. “In China, labor movement enabled by technology,” The New York Times, 16 June, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/17/business/global/17strike.html. Accessed 17 January 2012.Google Scholar
Blauner, Bob. 1964. Alienation and Freedom: The Factory Worker and His Industry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Burawoy, Michael. 1985. The Politics of Production: Factory Regimes under Capitalism and Socialism. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Chan, Chris King-chi. 2010. The Challenge of Labour in China: Strikes and the Changing Labour Regime in Global Factories. London and New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chan, Chris King-chi, and Ngai, Pun. 2009. “The making of a new working class? A study of collective actions of migrant workers in South China.” The China Quarterly 198, 287–303.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, Xin. 2008. “Guangdong sida quyu jingji fazhan gaishu” (A general report on the economic development of four areas in Guangdong province), 18 August, http://www.gdstats.gov.cn/tjfx/t20080818_60707.htm. Accessed 15 May 2009.Google Scholar
China Review. 2010. “Zhongguo nongmingong renshu da 2.3yi yueshouru 1,417 yuan” (The number of migrant workers in mainland China has reached 0.23 billion and their monthly salary is 1,417 yuan), 24 March, http://www.chinareviewnews.com/doc/1012/6/8/4/101268407.html?coluid=7&kindid=0&docid=101268407. Accessed 15 December 2011.Google Scholar
Collinson, David. 2005. “Strategies of resistance: power, knowledge and subjectivity in the workplace.” In Ackroyd, Stephen, Batt, Rosemary, Thompson, Paul and Tolbert, Pamela S. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Work and Organization. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 25–68.Google Scholar
Collinson, David, and Ackroyd, Stephen. 2005. “Resistance, misbehavior, and dissent.” In Ackroyd, Stephen, Batt, Rosemary, Thompson, Paul and Tolbert, Pamela S. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Work and Organization. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 305–328.Google Scholar
Coombs, Rod, Knights, David and Willmott, Hugh C.. 1992. “Culture, control and competitiveness: towards a conceptual framework of the study of information technology in organizations.” Organization Studies 13(1), 51–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernie, Sue, and Metcalf, David. 1998. (Not) Hanging on the Telephone: Payment Systems in the New Sweatshops. London: Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics and Political Science.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1977. Language, Counter-memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews. Bouchard, Donald F. (ed.). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972–1977. Gordon, Colin (ed. and trans.). New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Gordon, Janey. 2006. “The cell phone: an artifact of popular culture and a tool of the public sphere.” In Kavoori, Anandam and Arceneaux, Noah (eds.), The Cell Phone Reader: Essays in Social Transformation. New York: Peter Lang, 45–60.Google Scholar
Hounshell, David A. 1984. From the American System to Mass Production, 1800–1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jermier, John M., Knights, David and Nord, Walter R.. 1994. “Introduction.” In Jermier, John M., Knights, David and Nord, Walter R. (eds.), Resistance and Power in Organizations. London and New York: Routledge, 1–24.Google Scholar
Knights, David, and Sturdy, Andrew. 1990. “New technology and the self-disciplined worker in the insurance industry.” In Varcoe, Ian, McNeil, Maureen and Yearley, Steven (eds.), Deciphering Science and Technology: The Social Relations of Expertise. London: Macmillan, 126–154.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knights, David, and Vurdubakis, Theo. 1994. “Foucault, power, resistance and all that.” In Jermier, John M., Knights, David and Nord, Walter R. (eds.), Resistance and Power in Organizations. London and New York: Routledge, 167–198.Google Scholar
Knights, David, and Willmott, Hugh (eds.). 1988. New Technology and the Labour Process. London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Law, Patrick, and Peng, Yinni. 2007. “Cellphones and the social lives of migrant workers in Southern China.” In Pertierra, Raul (ed.), The Social Construction and Usage of Communication Technologies: Asian and European Experiences. Diliman, Quezon City: The University of the Philippines Press, 126–142.Google Scholar
Lee, Ching Kwan. 1998. Gender and the South China Miracle: Two Worlds of Factory Women. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Ching Kwan. 2007. Against the Law: Labor Protests in China's Rustbelt and Sunbelt. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lin, Angel, and Tong, Avin. 2008. “Mobile cultures of migrant workers in Southern China: informal literacies in the negotiation of (new) social relations of the new working women.” Knowledge, Technology & Policy 21(2), 73–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MIIT (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic of China). 2011. “2011 nian wuyue tongxin hangye yunxing zhuangkuang” (The report on the communication industry in May 2011), 24 June, http://www.miit.gov.cn/n11293472/n11293832/n11294132/n12858447/13903023.html. Accessed 15 December 2011.Google Scholar
Ngan, Raymond, and Ma, Stephen. 2008. “The relationship of mobile telephony to job mobility in China's Pearl River Delta.” Knowledge, Technology & Policy 21(2), 55–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Doherty, Damian, and Willmott, Hugh. 2001. “Debating labour process theory: the issue of subjectivity and the relevance of poststructuralism.” Sociology 35(2), 457–476.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ong, Aihwa. 1991. “The gender and labor politics of postmodernity.” Annual Review of Anthropology 20, 279–309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peng, Yinni. 2007. “Mobile communication and resistance of migrant workers in the Pearl River Delta area.” The Philippine Sociological Review 55, 97–115.Google Scholar
Peng, Yinni. 2010. “Exit: power struggles in a time of labor shortage in South China.” Social Transformations in Chinese Societies 6(1), 94–119.Google Scholar
Pun, Ngai. 2005. Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Pun, Ngai, and Lu, Huilin. 2010. “Unfinished proletarianization: self, anger, and class action among the second generation of peasant-workers in present-day China.” Modern China 36(5), 493–519.Google Scholar
Pun, Ngai, and Smith, Chris. 2007. “Putting transnational labour process in its place: the dormitory labour regime in post-socialist China.” Work, Employment and Society 21(1), 27–45.Google Scholar
Qiu, Jack Linchuan. 2009. Working-Class Network Society: Communication Technology and the Information Have-Less in Urban China. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Research Team on Labour and Social Security. 2004. “Guangyu mingong duanque de diaocha baogao” (Report on the labour shortage problem), Xinhua Net, 14 September, http://news.xinhuanet.com/zhengfu/2004-09/14/content_1979817.htm. Accessed 15 November 2008.Google Scholar
SBD (Statistics Bureau of Dongguan). 2008. “2007 nian Dongguanshi guomin jingji he shehui fazhan tongji gongbao” (The statistic report of economic and social development of Dongguan in 2007), 31 March, http://tjj.dg.gov.cn/website/web2/showArticle.jsp?ArticleId=1672&columnId=112&parentcolumnId=114. Accessed 12 November 2008 (no longer available).Google Scholar
Smith, Chris, and Thompson, Paul. 1998. “Re-evaluating the labour process debate.” Economic and Industrial Democracy 19(4), 551–577.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Staudenmaier, John M. 2001. “Disciplined imagination: the life and work of Thomas and Agatha Hughes.” In Allen, Michael Thad and Hecht, Gabrielle (eds.), Technologies of Power: Essays in Honor of Thomas Parke Hughes and Agatha Chipley Hughes. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, viii–ix.Google Scholar
Taylor, Phil, and Bain, Peter. 2007. “Reflections on the call centre – a reply to Glucksmann.” Work, Employment and Society 21(2), 349–362.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Townsend, Keith. 2005. “Electronic surveillance and cohesive teams: room for resistance in an Australian call centre?” New Technology, Work and Employment 20(1), 47–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Valsecchi, Raffaella. 2006. “Visible moves and invisible bodies: the case of teleworking in an Italian call centre.” New Technology, Work and Employment 21(2), 123–138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wallis, Cara. 2010. “The traditional meets the technological: mobile navigations of desire and intimacy.” In Donald, Stephanie Hemelryk, Anderson, Theresa Dirndorfer and Spry, Damien (eds.), Youth, Society and Mobile Media in Asia. London: Routledge, 57–69.Google Scholar
Wallis, Cara. 2011. “Mobile phones without guarantees: the promises of technology and the contingencies of culture.” New Media & Society 13(3), 471–485.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wen, Xiuwei. 2011. “Nongmingong zuowei shouji hulianwang de shouzhong kaifa yanjiu” (A study on migrant workers as internet users via their mobile phones), 19 October, http://media.people.com.cn/GB/22114/206896/232373/15946994.html. Accessed 12 December 2011.Google Scholar
Yang, Ke. 2008. “A preliminary study on the use of mobile phones amongst migrant workers in Beijing.” Knowledge, Technology & Policy 21(2), 65–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zuboff, Shoshana. 1988. In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar