Engaging the State: Informal Worker Protests in China

In China, the rise of precarious and informal work is closely linked to the processes of migration and urbanization. There are roughly 150-200 million migrant workers, representing between 15-17 percent of the total Chinese population (Chan 2010). By 2009, sixty percent of all urban employment in China was informal (Huang 2009); most of this is precarious work and a majority of these jobs are filled by migrants. Informal work is performed outside the purview of the state, and it is labeled precarious because these jobs do not provide employment stability, are low-waged and lack social protection.

This paper explores informal worker protests in China. I look at two different groups of informal workers; construction workers and street vendors and find that the salient issues for each group are different.  The most salient issue for informal construction workers is non-payment of wages and among street vendors it is the unfair treatment by local urban para-police called chengguan.  I explore these two issues and the resulting protests by analyzing the ways that their relationships with the state, the organization of their work, and different integration into urban spaces shape their organizing and protests efforts. I detail the major characteristics of these protests and argue that that these informal workers (and their protests) represent more of a threat to the government and the Communist Party’s goals of stability and harmony than do protests by formal workers.

Huang, Philip C. C. . 2009. "China's Neglected Informal Economy: Reality and Theory." Modern China 35(4):34.

Chen, Martha Alter, and Joann Vanek. 2013. "Informal Employment Revisited: Theories, Data & Policies." Indian Journal of Industrial Relations(IJIR): A Review of Economic & Social Development 48(3):390-401.