Chinese Migrant Workers’ Everyday Lives in the Early 1990s and Late 2000s

Abstract

In this chapter, I first focus on the work conditions and the perspectives of Chinese migrant industrial workers in the early 1990s through a careful examination of 76 private letters and show how state, capital, and patriarchal powers dominated workers’ everyday lives. The bulk of the chapter focuses on the current situation. I show how, two decades later, by the early years of the 2010s, Chinese migrant workers’ lives had changed significantly compared to the early 1990s. Workers’ social and material lives as well as their social values had altered, shifting toward increased urbanism, individualism, and a keen awareness of consumerism. All these changes are captured in my ethnography of workers’ everyday life practices.