Precarity and Industrial Transformation in Guangdong Province – a Methodological Exploration in Régulation

This paper examines the relationship between capitalism and precarity for workers in Guangdong province, China. I do this by taking a non-conventional view of precarity which attempts to capture the way that precarity is experienced, not simply in a particular moment of economic restructuring but as contingent effect of capitalist transformation and how workers attempt strategies to understand the change. Theoretically and methodologically I will combine the French Régulation School and Archer’s Morphogenetic approach to elucidate both the economic foundations essential to the Guangdong economy from a Régulation perspective and the ways in which people understand and interpret those foundations. This paper will explore the methodological aspects of my research by linking two key concepts of French Régulation, first, Growth Regimes as distinctive configurations of economic structures that create a specific form of value accumulation. Second, Modes of Regulation as a type of Archerian agency embodying the ideas of Growth Regimes acting and reacting according to how individuals and groups interpret the embodiment. This paper then asks two questions firstly, how to research Modes of Regulation. Secondly, how to research the interaction between Growth Regimes and Modes of Regulation to demonstrate if the continuities/discontinuities between these concepts lead to precarity. I will answer these questions by expounding on a series of in-depth qualitative interviews and an extensive economic analysis effectively triangulating the lived experience of workers with the economic pillars of the region. Guangdong was chosen as the best place to conduct this research because of the accelerated and condensed change that has taken place there over the last 35+ years. Because of the pace of change it has magnified and condensed divergent strategies such that I am able to encounter a variety of disparate experiences in one relatively small geographical area further deepening the analysis.