Increasing Employment Precariousness in Post-socialist China: Everyone Equal in a World of Uncertainty?

ABSTRACT

Based on a mixed-methods research design, this article explores young adults’ work trajectories. The findings presented in this article are based on retrospective longitudinal data collected in Beijing between September 2012 and August 2014. It is argued that, in China, neoliberal ideology has been mobilized in conjunction with a neo-familialist discourse which emphasizes the central role of women within Chinese families. Once married, women are compelled to embody “traditional” Chinese values. Although the country has a high level of female labour-market participation, in post-socialist China, the public discourse on family tends to reassign women to their roles as wives and mothers above their role as workers. Women are also more at risk than men of encountering vulnerabilities in their employment trajectories. Since the opening-up to a market economy and the individualization of labour relations, the market ideology has imposed itself and deepened socio-economic inequalities and social stratification. As the collectivist welfare system has not yet found a solid substitute able to provide social protection for the whole population, the family, and especially women, are asked to take on part of this role.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• work
• precariat
• youth
• China

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Ernst and Lucy Schmidheiny Foundation, which funded this research.

I am also grateful to Tong Xin, who welcomed me into the Department of Sociology at Peking University during the time of data collection.

I warmly thank Harriet Bjerrum Nielsen, the editor of this special issue, as well as two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on the first version of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The residence booklet (jumin hukou bu) was introduced in the 1950s. Two indications with important implications are contained in this booklet: the category of the hukou (agricultural or non-agricultural) and its place of registration. The combination of these two criteria leads to a strong segmentalization of the population, leading to unequal access to socio-economic rights (Wang, 2005).

2. The MCSA is performed using TraMineR, a package of the R software, developed by G. Ritschard, A. Gabadinho, M. Studer, and N. Müller (Gabadinho, Ritschard, Studer, & Müller, 2009).

3. For further details on how OMA works, see Gauthier et al. (2010, pp. 4–5).

4. For political reasons, from 1966 to 1978, about 17 million urban young people were forced to leave their families to live and work in the countryside with comrades (Bonnin, 2004).

5. In this article, work precariousness refers to labile labour relations regulated by short-term labour contracts or no labour contract at all.

6. In this article, informal work is a job that is not stable or guaranteed, that does not rely on the signing of a labour contract, and that does not guarantee social protection.

7. In 2013, Xi Jinping was already reminding the China Women’s Organization of the importance of promoting family values.

8. He first stated the idea of a “Chinese dream” in 2012. He was then in the National Museum in Beijing standing in front of the “The Road of Rejuvenation”. This museum room opens with an introductory text in which it is written that, for generations, the Chinese people have been pursuing efforts to realize the dream of rebuilding a powerful and prosperous nation: “The Chinese nation is a great nation whose people are industrious, courageous, intelligent and peace-loving and have made indelible contributions to the progress of human civilization. For generations and generations, the Chinese people have been pursuing a dream of national strength and prosperity. ‘The Road of Rejuvenation’ is a permanent exhibition showcasing the explorations made by the Chinese people from all walk of life who, after being reduced to a semi-colonial, semi-feudal society after the Opium War of 1840, rose in resistance against humiliation and misery, and tried in every way possible to rejuvenate the nation. […] Today, the Chinese nation is standing firm in the east, facing a brilliant future of great rejuvenation. The long-cherished dream and aspiration of the Chinese people will surely come to reality.”

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Sandra V. Constantin

Sandra V. Constantin holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Geneva, Switzerland and is a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland (HES.SO) in Lausanne, Switzerland. Her research interests are youth and life-course studies, social policy, and gender. In her post-doctoral research, she is taking a transnational perspective in collaboration with Professor Carola Togni to examine the rise of “the principle of equality” in social policy.