Paper short abstract:

How does entrepreneurism for workers in Southern China affect their ability to reduce precarity? This paper will explore how workers are trying to use entrepreneurism as a method to overcome a plateau in precarity reduction and the prospects for long-term livelihood security.

Paper long abstract:

The World Bank and other development agencies often tout being an entrepreneur as a fundamental component of improving a countries ability to develop. China has embraced these policies wholeheartedly in fact at the essence of Xi Jinping's Chinese dream project, is an emphatic reliance on entrepreneurism to encourage citizens to pick themselves up to create a better future for themselves. An emphasis on entrepreneurism is having mixed effects on reducing precarity for industrial workers in Guangdong. On the one hand it is providing hope for workers to find an alternative to the immobility of low paid factory work. On the other hand, due to the relative simplicity of becoming an entrepreneur, entrepreneurism is an important factor undermining the formation of a strong collective working class movement. The absence of a strong working class movement fails to provide sufficient resistance to the dominance of capital and a growth at all costs mentality thus re-enforcing precarity for industrial workers. In this paper I will draw on my 2014 fieldwork in Guangdong where I conducted more than 60 interviews with workers, employers and other key informants. I will analyze the subjective experiences of workers' relationship with entrepreneurism and how this relationship informs precarity.