Periodic Reporting for period 3 - WelfareStruggles (Welfare for Migrant Factory Workers: Moral Struggles and Politics of Care under Market Socialism)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2022-02-01 do 2023-07-31
China and Vietnam are known as the factories of the world. Following decades of state socialism, the two countries adopted market reforms at the turn of the 1980s. With political systems that feature continued leadership of the communist party alongside deepening privatization, these countries are now vastly different from what they used to be. Economic growth, industrialization and urbanization have ushered in entirely new landscapes of production, consumption, and mobility.
One major transformation has been in the realm of social protection. Following years of declining socialist welfare, both governments have been pushing ahead with ambitious welfare programs. Like in other southern contexts, universal health insurance, pension, and cash transfers have been expanding along with provisions by diverse non-state actors. Another transformation has been massive rural-urban labor mobility; millions of people migrate to urban and industrial areas to work in factories that produce consumer goods for the whole world. Many live away from their families as they work to sustain them. WelfareStruggles comparatively examines the moral politics underlining how the migrant labor force is being cared for by focusing on the welfare of the migrant factory workers and their families. The labour of migrant workers has been instrumental to both national development and global corporations’ profitability in these countries. Their welfare is a domain in which the workers, the state, global capital, and global society all have a stake. Our focus is therefore productive for understanding the moral, social, and political dynamics of welfare restructuring as part of global dynamics of production and social protection.
This project examines the moral politics around the definition of needs, the logics and practices of provision and access, as well as the claims and contestations between recipients and providers of welfare. Its objectives are threefold:
1. to understand how welfare provisions for migrant factory workers are conceived, executed, and perceived by the actors involved;
2.to compare the moral dynamics of welfare restructuring between China and Vietnam; and
3.to locate market socialist welfare in the broader context of welfare transformations in the Global South.
One major transformation has been in the realm of social protection. Following years of declining socialist welfare, both governments have been pushing ahead with ambitious welfare programs. Like in other southern contexts, universal health insurance, pension, and cash transfers have been expanding along with provisions by diverse non-state actors. Another transformation has been massive rural-urban labor mobility; millions of people migrate to urban and industrial areas to work in factories that produce consumer goods for the whole world. Many live away from their families as they work to sustain them. WelfareStruggles comparatively examines the moral politics underlining how the migrant labor force is being cared for by focusing on the welfare of the migrant factory workers and their families. The labour of migrant workers has been instrumental to both national development and global corporations’ profitability in these countries. Their welfare is a domain in which the workers, the state, global capital, and global society all have a stake. Our focus is therefore productive for understanding the moral, social, and political dynamics of welfare restructuring as part of global dynamics of production and social protection.
This project examines the moral politics around the definition of needs, the logics and practices of provision and access, as well as the claims and contestations between recipients and providers of welfare. Its objectives are threefold:
1. to understand how welfare provisions for migrant factory workers are conceived, executed, and perceived by the actors involved;
2.to compare the moral dynamics of welfare restructuring between China and Vietnam; and
3.to locate market socialist welfare in the broader context of welfare transformations in the Global South.
The project’s kick-off workshop in 2019, The Good Life in Late Socialist Asia, framed the project's focus on welfare provision within the broader theme of the good life, giving it greater analytical depth and scope.
By the summer of 2020, the team members had acquired sufficient methodological and theoretical training. We had organised two graduate seminars on research ethics, three workshops on data protection and a joint workshop with the ERC project Whales of Power on the ethics and practicalities of doing fieldwork in East Asia during the pandemic. In addition, the virtual workshop Global Encounter brought together researchers from the project and our two partner institutions in China and Vietnam.
By September 2021, the data collection via the two ethnographic studies had been completed; now at the end of the third reporting period in 2023, the two PhD researchers are finalizing their dissertations. The data collection for the comparative social policy analysis required more time because the researcher was unable to enter the countries due to prolonged border restrictions, but she was able to conduct field visits in early 2022. Based on this component, we have initiated a joint book project by Dr Lin, Dr Mao, and the PI.
As well, we organised panels at the 2019 American Anthropological Association's Annual Conference in Vancouver, the 2019 European Association of Southeast Asian Studies conference in Berlin, and the ICAS conference in 2021, the Euroseas Conference in Paris (2022), the European Association of Social Anthropologists Conference in Belfast (2022), German Sociological Congress in Bielefeld (2022), the Association of Social Anthropology conference in London (2023).
In December 2021, we organised the mid-term conference, Reconfiguring Labour and Welfare in Emerging Economies of the Global South. Following the conference, we have been working on two special issues, including Reconfiguring Labour and Welfare in the Global South: How The Social Question is Framed as Market Participation (Global Social Policy) and Welfare in Crisis: Labor and Social Protection in the Global South (Journal of Labor and Society).
We have also put together another special issue for the Journal of Political Sociology. We also submitted a number of articles to World Development, Work, Employment and Society, and Global Social Policy. A conceptual paper (Nguyen 2023) is now in production for publication in 2023 by HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory. In 2022, we also published a well-received Policy Brief Series.
By the summer of 2020, the team members had acquired sufficient methodological and theoretical training. We had organised two graduate seminars on research ethics, three workshops on data protection and a joint workshop with the ERC project Whales of Power on the ethics and practicalities of doing fieldwork in East Asia during the pandemic. In addition, the virtual workshop Global Encounter brought together researchers from the project and our two partner institutions in China and Vietnam.
By September 2021, the data collection via the two ethnographic studies had been completed; now at the end of the third reporting period in 2023, the two PhD researchers are finalizing their dissertations. The data collection for the comparative social policy analysis required more time because the researcher was unable to enter the countries due to prolonged border restrictions, but she was able to conduct field visits in early 2022. Based on this component, we have initiated a joint book project by Dr Lin, Dr Mao, and the PI.
As well, we organised panels at the 2019 American Anthropological Association's Annual Conference in Vancouver, the 2019 European Association of Southeast Asian Studies conference in Berlin, and the ICAS conference in 2021, the Euroseas Conference in Paris (2022), the European Association of Social Anthropologists Conference in Belfast (2022), German Sociological Congress in Bielefeld (2022), the Association of Social Anthropology conference in London (2023).
In December 2021, we organised the mid-term conference, Reconfiguring Labour and Welfare in Emerging Economies of the Global South. Following the conference, we have been working on two special issues, including Reconfiguring Labour and Welfare in the Global South: How The Social Question is Framed as Market Participation (Global Social Policy) and Welfare in Crisis: Labor and Social Protection in the Global South (Journal of Labor and Society).
We have also put together another special issue for the Journal of Political Sociology. We also submitted a number of articles to World Development, Work, Employment and Society, and Global Social Policy. A conceptual paper (Nguyen 2023) is now in production for publication in 2023 by HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory. In 2022, we also published a well-received Policy Brief Series.
Our results are painting a comparative picture of the dynamic linkages between labour mobility, welfare provision and changing configurations of social protection on the ground and at policy making level. They help to explain the contradiction between the privatization drive and the socialist oriented notions of the good life under market socialism, while revealing the particularities in the relationship between labour, government and the market of each country.
The Development and Change article (Portfolios of Social Protection) identifies the increasing significance of private risk management in household social protection strategies, especially the rise of private life insurance as an emerging method of social protection among rural communities in Vietnam.
The Global Public Policy and Governance article (The Cycle of Commodification) offers a novel analytical framework to understand welfare regimes as a social and political field that keeps evolving in response to the changing global valuation of labour. It indicates how the two countries’ distinctive regimes of migrant labour welfare are integral to a cycle of commodification that encompasses the overlapping processes of commodification, de-commodification and re-commodification of labour. The framework is helpful for understanding the transformations of welfare systems in connection with the mobility of labour not only in Vietnam and China but also in other contexts where industrial expansion has taken placebased on migrant labour.
Arising from the kick-off workshop, the special issue “Rural Life in Late Socialism”, published by the European Journal of East Asian Studies, has been published as an edited volume by Brill. The other special issue, The Good Life in Late Socialism, is now in production by positions: Asia critique. These publications are major interventions in the understanding of how labour mobility and welfare are part of people’s quest for the good life under market socialism and how differing notions of the good life compete with each other in a politics of aspirations partaken in by various actors.
The HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory article (The Entrepreneurial Self of Market Socialism) shows how self-entrepreneurship, and along with it, self-responsibility, has come to define the ways in which people and the state operate to ensure livelihoods and wellbeing under market socialism.
Our Policy Brief Series covers policy issues related to welfare provision in China and Vietnam, including the changing household registration systems, taxation systems and labour laws.
The Development and Change article (Portfolios of Social Protection) identifies the increasing significance of private risk management in household social protection strategies, especially the rise of private life insurance as an emerging method of social protection among rural communities in Vietnam.
The Global Public Policy and Governance article (The Cycle of Commodification) offers a novel analytical framework to understand welfare regimes as a social and political field that keeps evolving in response to the changing global valuation of labour. It indicates how the two countries’ distinctive regimes of migrant labour welfare are integral to a cycle of commodification that encompasses the overlapping processes of commodification, de-commodification and re-commodification of labour. The framework is helpful for understanding the transformations of welfare systems in connection with the mobility of labour not only in Vietnam and China but also in other contexts where industrial expansion has taken placebased on migrant labour.
Arising from the kick-off workshop, the special issue “Rural Life in Late Socialism”, published by the European Journal of East Asian Studies, has been published as an edited volume by Brill. The other special issue, The Good Life in Late Socialism, is now in production by positions: Asia critique. These publications are major interventions in the understanding of how labour mobility and welfare are part of people’s quest for the good life under market socialism and how differing notions of the good life compete with each other in a politics of aspirations partaken in by various actors.
The HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory article (The Entrepreneurial Self of Market Socialism) shows how self-entrepreneurship, and along with it, self-responsibility, has come to define the ways in which people and the state operate to ensure livelihoods and wellbeing under market socialism.
Our Policy Brief Series covers policy issues related to welfare provision in China and Vietnam, including the changing household registration systems, taxation systems and labour laws.