Gendering the dormitory labor system: production, reproduction, and migrant labor in south China

Abstract

This article discusses the dormitory labor system, a specific Chinese labor system through which the lives of Chinese women migrant workers are shaped by the international division of labor. This dormitory labor system is a gendered form of labor use that underlies the boom of export-oriented industrial production in China, which has been further boosted by China's accession to the World Trade Organization. Combining work and residence under the dormitory labor system, production and daily reproduction of labor are reconfigured for the sake of global production, with foreign-invested or privately owned companies controlling almost all daily reproduction of labor. Drawing upon the findings of a 2003 – 4 case study of an electronics factory in South China, this paper analyzes the operation of the dormitory labor system, detailing both its role in increasing output and profits and its role in supporting workers' resistance to their employers.

Keywords:

• China
• dormitory labor system
• global production
• migrant labor
• women workers
• JEL Codes: F16, F1, F

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge that the fieldwork studies for this paper were supported by the Hong Kong Research Grant Council for the project, “Living with Global Capitalism: Labor Control and Resistance through the Dormitory Labor System in China” (2003 – 5). I would also like to thank Chan Wai-ling, an Executive Board member of the Chinese Working Women Network for providing research assistance.

Notes

¹The hukou system requires every Chinese citizen to be recorded with the registration authority at birth, and have his or her residential categorization (either urban or rural) fixed. The mother's hukou rather than birthplace decides the location, so a mother with a rural hukou can only give her children a rural hukou, even if the children were born in the city and their father is an urban resident. Citizenship benefits are tied to one's hukou, which can only be changed through government authorization (Dorothy J. Solinger 1999). The system is designed to prevent unplanned urbanization and overcrowding, which is typical of developing countries that lack statutory internal “passport” or “citizenship” controls. Its downside is that rural residents are cut off from benefits of urban residency, creating an urban class of noncitizens. Pressure to change the system is growing and there have already been experiments with eliminating the hukou system (Ye Zhang 2002: 32).

²Floaters refer to migrant workers who move from one location to another either on a short-term or long-term basis, having departed from their registered place of residence without a corresponding transfer of hukou.

³The variation is explained by the different definitions of migrant workers used by researchers and the difficulty of counting people who are transient and may work only part of the year in the city.

⁴The Chinese media commonly uses the term dagongzai for male migrant workers, which indicates that they do dirty and dangerous work and implies lower status.

⁵Workers and their families were provided with life-long accommodation, properly housed in an apartment unit, and hence the urban working class was considered the most privileged class in China. Irrespective of gender or marital status, both male and female employees were provided with apartment units of various sizes. Usually the accommodation buildings were adjacent to production buildings, circled by an architecture of factory and housing estate.

⁶ Shenzhen jingji tequ laowugong tiaoli (Regulations on Labor Conditions in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone) (1993) defines laowugong (temporary hired labor) as those who work in Shenzhen without local permanent residential household status (Article 2). Residents of Hong Kong SAR, Macau SAR, and Taiwan, Province of China, as well as foreign nationals working in the Shenzhen SEZ, are not covered by the regulations on labor conditions (Article 53).

⁷This case study is part of a larger field study I conducted in Pearl River Delta from 2003 – 5 for the project, “Living with Global Capitalism: Labor Control and Resistance through the Dormitory Labor System in China.”

⁸Thus, instead of being remunerated at RMB 4.9 on the evenings and RMB 6.6 on Saturdays, workers were paid at RMB 4.2 for overtime.

⁹A report of ten small-to-medium sized garment factories, by Jenny Chan and Karin Mak (2005), released by the Chinese Working Women Network, a local labor NGO, shows that women workers' wages were below the legal minimum wage and deferral of wage payments was frequently observed. The workforce of these factories ranges from fifty to 200 people, over 70 percent of which are female workers, primarily young girls in their late teens and middle-aged married women. The smaller factories mainly owned by small subcontractors, who are mainland Chinese from Guangdong and neighboring coastal provinces, have particularly poor working conditions.

¹⁰Contrary to the clothing industry and despite a strong computer campaign organized internationally by NGOs to enforce it, corporate codes of conduct at the workplace are still not a common practice for the electronics industry. The adoption of an international monitoring system in China became a trend for TNCs such as Levi Strauss, Nike, Reebok, The Gap, and others in the late 1990s. The introduction of corporate codes became part of these companies' strategic policies in securing the sale of their goods and services on the global market. Internal monitoring of subcontractors or suppliers by the companies' representatives on a regular basis is the usual case, although sometimes independent monitoring involving invited academics, auditors, and/or NGOs is used to enhance credibility. Corporate codes of conduct have yet to be fully implemented in major economic zones of the Pearl River and Yangtze River deltas in Southeast China. Corruption, false statements and records, and cover-ups are quite common.

¹¹In March 2003, the factory started to lay off workers when their contracts expired. The 600 workers were laid off immediately after the Chinese New Year holiday, when workers had returned from their hometowns. Without any advance notice or preparation, the 600 workers were asked to leave the factory and the dormitory compound immediately and were provided with only one month's salary in compensation.