Rural Roots of Current Migrant Labor Shortage in China: Development and Labor Empowerment in a Situation of Incomplete Proletarianization

Abstract

This paper challenges and complements the view, widely held in sociological labor studies, that incomplete proletarianization weakens labor’s bargaining power in the city by allowing capital to externalize the costs of labor reproduction to the countryside. The authors argue instead that the preservation of migrant workers’ links to the rural economy plus rural development measures can, under certain circumstances, empower labor by increasing their marketplace bargaining power. Beginning with the puzzle of migrant labor shortages in China, and based on national data and a case study, the authors show that access to land and pro-rural state policies in the first decade of the twenty-first century together stimulated rural development in hinterland China and created more employment opportunities in agricultural and local nonfarm sectors. As a consequence, rural (migrant) laborers in China were able to rely on rural employment and choose not to participate in labor migration, thus contributing to the labor shortage and pressing employers in the city to increase wage rates and improve working and living conditions.