Chinese migrant workers: factors constraining the emergence of class consciousness*

Labour protests in China, particularly among the so-called ‘new generations of peasant-workers’ (xinshengdai nongmingong),1 have been increasing during the past decade. Every time an explosive strike breaks out and receives publicity outside China, it stirs up excitement among labour sympathizers. Great expectations are sometimes placed on the disturbances, in the belief that it heralds a rising consciousness of collective interests among workers. Is this indeed the case? These workers are young, fresh from the countryside, heading straight from the fi elds into factories that are usually located in new industrial zones cut off from urban areas. This does not at fi rst sight seem a likely group to exhibit any collective identity. Is this new generation indeed developing a strong working class consciousness? Exponents of the thesis that migrant workers are developing class consciousness do not contend that this is yet at a high level. Even scholars such as Ngai Pun and Huilin Lu (2010, p. 512), who optimistically point to the migrant workers’ potential to mount collective challenges, still characterize ‘the second generation of peasant-workers’, who are seen as more conscious than the fi rst generation, as ‘gradually [our emphasis] becoming aware of its class position’.2 Indeed, at a conference held at Vienna in September 2011, Pun in her oral presentation cautioned that it would be a long time before there would be a massive upheaval. In this chapter we come to the same conclusion, though arriving at it from a diff erent angle. We hope to put forth a diff erent understanding of the present class consciousness of the millions of Chinese migrant workers in South China by drawing on Marx, Lenin, and Marxist historians’ views of history.