Completed Book Project
Atomized Incorporation: Chinese Workers and the Aftermath of China's Rise (forthcoming at CUP)
In this book, I ask whether the Chinese regime’s selective toleration of labor protests has appeased factory workers’ discontent. As the export-led growth becomes unsustainable, the regime began to face new challenges in state-labor relations. The rural-born migrant workers, who comprise the majority of low-skilled workforce in factories, have engaged in factory-based protests to demand better pay and working conditions. The central and local governments adopt a relatively tolerant approach to these protests but ensure that workers' demands remain job-specific. This approach, which I call atomized incorporation, has been assumed to ensure the authoritarian society's long-term resilience.
I theorize and empirically examine both the advantages and limits of atomized incorporation from workers’ perspectives. Based on quantitative and qualitative data collected from two years of in-depth fieldwork, I argue that atomized incorporation has been successful at demobilizing labor movement because it encourages those workers with collective action resources to receive rewards. Yet, this also means that a large number of aggrieved workers are left out because they do not have access to such resources. When the regime only tolerates workers' claim-making as atomized economic agents but disregards their non-material discontent about the broader society as a social and political being, I suggest that its selective material co-optation might not depoliticize labor discontent.
Ongoing Book Project
Shame and Pride: Labor Politics and Self-Conscious Emotion in South Korea and China (In progress)
My current book project investigates how emotional mechanisms mediate the effect of structural labor market changes on political dynamics in South Korea and China. In particular, the study examines the role of self-conscious emotions---such as shame and pride---in inducing a range of political engagement of young citizens in their 20s and 30s. As both countries go through a rapid transformation of labor market structure in the last decade, the dwindling supply of "good" jobs for the new entrants to the labor market has become one of the most important issues in the society. This study looks at the interplay of social norms---what defines "good" jobs and "successful" life---and structural labor market changes to understand the growing social pain of younger citizens and their social and political attitudes and behavior. At the same time, the book examines how workers' experiences with their work (both paid and unpaid) enable them to update and modify the internalized social norms and their self-image.
Funding by Swiss National Science Foundation (- 2027)
Atomized Incorporation: Chinese Workers and the Aftermath of China's Rise (forthcoming at CUP)
In this book, I ask whether the Chinese regime’s selective toleration of labor protests has appeased factory workers’ discontent. As the export-led growth becomes unsustainable, the regime began to face new challenges in state-labor relations. The rural-born migrant workers, who comprise the majority of low-skilled workforce in factories, have engaged in factory-based protests to demand better pay and working conditions. The central and local governments adopt a relatively tolerant approach to these protests but ensure that workers' demands remain job-specific. This approach, which I call atomized incorporation, has been assumed to ensure the authoritarian society's long-term resilience.
I theorize and empirically examine both the advantages and limits of atomized incorporation from workers’ perspectives. Based on quantitative and qualitative data collected from two years of in-depth fieldwork, I argue that atomized incorporation has been successful at demobilizing labor movement because it encourages those workers with collective action resources to receive rewards. Yet, this also means that a large number of aggrieved workers are left out because they do not have access to such resources. When the regime only tolerates workers' claim-making as atomized economic agents but disregards their non-material discontent about the broader society as a social and political being, I suggest that its selective material co-optation might not depoliticize labor discontent.
Ongoing Book Project
Shame and Pride: Labor Politics and Self-Conscious Emotion in South Korea and China (In progress)
My current book project investigates how emotional mechanisms mediate the effect of structural labor market changes on political dynamics in South Korea and China. In particular, the study examines the role of self-conscious emotions---such as shame and pride---in inducing a range of political engagement of young citizens in their 20s and 30s. As both countries go through a rapid transformation of labor market structure in the last decade, the dwindling supply of "good" jobs for the new entrants to the labor market has become one of the most important issues in the society. This study looks at the interplay of social norms---what defines "good" jobs and "successful" life---and structural labor market changes to understand the growing social pain of younger citizens and their social and political attitudes and behavior. At the same time, the book examines how workers' experiences with their work (both paid and unpaid) enable them to update and modify the internalized social norms and their self-image.
Funding by Swiss National Science Foundation (- 2027)
