Beyond Coercion: The Politics of Inequality in China

Why do states use inequality as a tool of social control? How do authoritarian regimes atomize people? Beyond Coercion advances an original theory and concept of political atomization about how the Chinese state maintains social control and entrenches structural inequality. It explains why most migrant workers still lack access to urban public services despite national directives to incorporate them into cities, reported worker shortages, and ongoing labor unrest and how policies said to expand workers’ rights end up undermining their claims to benefits owed to them. The book argues that local governments provide public services for migrants using a process of political individualization that enables the state to exercise control beyond coercion by atomizing those who might otherwise mobilize against it, but this can eventually be destabilizing for the regime. Findings are based on several years of fieldwork in six cities across China; 150 interviews with migrant workers, frontline service providers, and government officials; archival and policy documents; and ethnographic observations in construction sites, factories, schools, and hospitals.