Paper short abstract:

Migration could induce countless imaginations, bringing unknowns, uncertainties, but also new opportunities.Through analysing the life stories of migrant workers in an electronic factory in Shenzhen, I demonstrate people perceive uncertainty differently according to their class positions.

Paper long abstract:

Migration could induce countless imaginations, bringing unknowns, uncertainties, but also new possibilities. Vacations, travels, business trips, immigration, all make people leave the familiar fields and go into different contexts. Different migration opens different imagination. For social actors with insufficient information, the decision to migrate is often not from rational calculations, but made on basis of imaginations. Therefore, irrational, emotional, moral and subjective dimensions often should be taken into account. Unknown and uncertainties could be crises, but also could be opportunities. Uncertainty could be perceived as dangerous, but could be also the way to escape from tedious current situation. Taking these into account, the class formation, which is dominated by proletarianization paradigm and pay large attention to the structure, material arrangements and abstract mechanism, might need to be revised.

This article will re-exam class formation of migrant workers in post-Mao China by taking their imaginations into account. Through analysing the life stories of four Chinese migrant workers and one Taiwanese migrant co-worker in an electronic factory in Shenzhen, I demonstrate people perceive uncertainty differently according to their class positions and imaginations. When actualizing their imagined future, the migrant workers make an effort to see through the structure and actively create opportunities by seeing and establishing new connections of the existing resources, which makes the "revolution without revolutionaries" happen constantly in everyday life. Therefore, I argue when studying class formation and social inequality, we should not only discuss agency, but also imagination.

Paper short abstract:

Paper is on the lost identity of the youth in this undefined region of periurban Sriperumbudur near Chennai, India. It looks on how this lack of identity and has dragged the youth in a world of crises and uncertainty and how they respond and cope with these situations in different ways.

Paper long abstract:

You ask them where they belong; you get answers that make one confused, they belong everywhere, to rural, urban, and adopt styles and livelihoods of both. To an outsider, they are careless, stubborn and rebellious, but sit a while and the words that pour out make one helpless of the plight these youth undergo. Hundreds of youth are seen walking around aimlessly with degrees, and technical skills that those who have taken off their identity do not value. They hold certificates of uncertainty and loss of identity and certain identity that strips them of their livelihood and existence. A mere 40 km away from Chennai, India's fourth largest city, is located an industrial town, Sriperumbudur with thousands of people living in an around less identified periurban region, the spatial identity of which is little known, nor specially recognized or the loss of socio, economic, and geographical identities have ever been paid attention. With booming corporate industries around these invisible confused lives, who are no way beneficiaries of the development expansions, rather are exploited of their land, labour, culture and most of all identity. It is a daily war of struggle between where they belong without an identity to still a world of uncertainty they could be rooted out by bypassing developments. In this paper, I look at how the bypassed youth feels to live, respond and cope in a world lacking spatial identity, amidst mounting uncertainty of periurban of Sriperumbudur, Chennai, India, a process snare they are trapped in.

Paper short abstract:

Based on 1-year fieldwork in the security team of Lhasa railway station, I study the bodily work experience and sexualisation and ethnicization of labour. Deceived by 'the formalisation of informal work', migrant workers are exploited by a Tibetan middle-class dream of being part of the state.

Paper long abstract:

Following the recent interests in the interaction between the global privatisation trend and heterogeneous ethical actions(GENS), this article illustrates Chinese infrastructure politics under the state capitalistic regime through railway outsourcing works. Based on 12 months' fieldwork with Tibetan security girls in Lhasa railway station, I study the precariousness taken by post-socialist migrant labors. My research combines the ANT perspective with phenomenology, focusing on bodily experience in the entangled human-nonhuman security network. For girls from traditional nomad's families on vast grassland living in a relaxed lifestyle, the crowded working space, the frequent physical contacts, the fixed schedule and the unreachable standard of working as machines, challenge their life habit and time-space cognition, trigger the sense of fetter and anxiety, and undermine their identity as Tibetans and even human. Besides the implicit daily governance, the work enables proletarianization processes through sexualisation and ethnicization of labour. They become cheap workers because of bio-morality associated with their minority female identity, who are assumed unskilful, endurable, and available to break into the intimate boundary of body checking. Different from the 'pink collars' attracted by global consumptive culture, most security girls are deceived by techniques what I call 'the formalisation of informal work', making other people or even themselves believe that they are or will be formal workers. Against the backdrop of Chinese 'gift' development projects and China-Tibet patron-client relationship, these girls are inspired by a Tibetan middle-class dream of being accepted by formal institutions and becoming a part of the state.

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses of how graduates make use of social capital,in addition to human capital and individual attributes, to find and secure employment. The different ways social capital expresses itself in graduate job search gives insight in addressing high levels of graduate unemployment in Zambia.

Paper long abstract:

Worldwide there is increasing pressure on universities from various stakeholders but in particular employers and graduates. Employers demand graduates that are work ready and adaptable to a dynamic labour market. In Sub - Saharan Africa, graduate view university as a means by which to aces high wage high skilled employment. As such, universities are invariably assessed, partially, by the ability of their graduates to find employment. Internationally, this is reflected by the growing emphasis on the measurement on graduate destinations. Despite this the transition from graduation to employment is still it assumed as being simple and direct. However, in Zambia, the reality is that a large number of graduates are jobless despite being educated. Furthermore, the transition from graduation to employment is far more complex. This paper reflects on a study that sought to analyse of how graduates make use of social capital, in addition to their credentialed human capital and individual attributes, to find and secure employment. We argue that the different ways social capital expresses itself in graduate job search patterns provides possible solutions and a different perspective to addressing the high levels of graduate unemployment in Zambia. Furthermore, we will argue that this research adds to our understanding of the interactions between higher education and society. This study adopted a qualitative case study research design and made use of the snow ball sampling approach. Fifteen semi structured interviews were conducted and findings and emerging themes analysed in response to research questions.

Paper short abstract:

Political consulting has become an increasingly popular profession for middle-class citizens in India. This paper analyses how citizens use this profession to channel their participation in politics, the social imaginaries in this profession, and how this work shapes their political subjectivities.

Paper long abstract:

In recent years, India has witnessed the emergence and rapid expansion of political consulting firms working in the domain of electoral and party politics. At the same time, working for these firms has become a 'new' legitimate profession, and in particular, young, urban middle-class citizens have come to constitute the bulk of the workforce in this industry. This paper analyses how and why this emergent profession has caught the imagination of the middle-class and how it provides them new ways of practicing, thinking about, and relating to politics. Based on interviews conducted with employees of political consulting firms based in New Delhi, this paper seeks to provide an empirically grounded account of the motivations that individuals have to join this profession, the patterns of recruitment, training, and management of the workforce, and the quotidian experiences that working in such firm entails.

I argue that India's middle-class citizens have come to use this profession as a means to channel their political participation. In a context where conventional party politics is seen to be suffused with venality and crimininalization, working in a political consulting firm is seen to offer a new possibility of re-engaging with the realm of politics. Consequently, this profession has allowed citizens to fashion themselves as ethical political subjects who are invested in promoting a 'cleaner', managerial, and technocratic brand of conducting politics. I also show how the experience of working in political consulting firms re-shapes the political subjectivities of these employees leading to some unexpected consequences.

Paper short abstract:

Exploring the organisation and experience of work in the platform of Uber in Kolkata, the paper problematises the debate between flexible work and precarity and shows how employment in the platform economy perpetuates informality but also offer economic mobility and subjective wellbeing.

Paper long abstract:

The literature on labour in the gig or platform economy is witness to vigorous debates. To proponents, gig or flexible work symbolizes autonomy, improved remuneration and reflects the future of work. To opponents, such work represents increasing precarity, informalisation, erosion of workers' rights and exploitation. The dominant arguments, despite their universalist assertion, reflect the particularities of the global north. In much of the global south, the experience of gig work is mediated by the existence of large informal sectors, high levels of poverty and lack of welfare provisions. Moreover, the distinction between employment and self-employment is blurred. The app taxi sector provides an excellent example of this, with drivers being owners of cars in cities of the global north while driver-owner dichotomy is endemic in cities of the global south, with specific forms of surveillance and control at play. Exploring the organisation and experience of work in the platform of Uber in the city of Kolkata, the paper will show how new forms of flexible and precarious employment also at the same time offer economic mobility and subjective wellbeing. Ethnographic interview with Uber drivers will be examined to reflect on the specificities of gig work in the global south and to address how people enter, perform and imagine such work and subvert control.

Paper short abstract:

I focus on salespersons in a fast-growing optical retail company in New Delhi, India. I discuss how the materiality of the products sold and equipment used mediates the experience of work in a way that work itself comes to be viewed as a product for consumption, and the worker as a consumer of work.

Paper long abstract:

Much ethnography of work in the growing service sector has focused on the body and emotions at work - prominently, 'embodied labour' and 'managed emotions'. I argue that the worker's relationship with the material environment of work has been underexplored. Drawing on fieldwork, I focus on a fast-growing optical retail company manufacturing 'first copies' of international eyewear brands in New Delhi, India. Aspirational middle-class men and women working as salespersons, optometrists and store managers in its retail outlets express deep disdain for its 'naklee maal', i.e. fake eyewear products and low-quality eye-testing equipment. They do so not as imagined buyers, but as workers selling the products and operating the equipment. Their poor assessment of their 'cheap' material environment results in anxiety concerning the quality of the 'brand' of the worker, a poor 'rating' of the employer company and 'shopping' for better work. I discuss how the materiality of the products sold and equipment used mediates the experience of work in a way that work itself comes to be viewed as a product for consumption, and the worker as a consumer of work. I relate this to the pervasiveness of contemporary consumer culture, which, I argue, results not just in an increased desire to competitively consume and display goods, but also creates particular kinds of subjectivities and selfhoods through which to experience social life - prominently, work.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the ways that young entrepreneurial women in urban Ethiopia define their identities, their aspirations, and their relationships to development against the backdrop of rapid economic and political change.

Paper long abstract:

In Wukro (a small city in the North of Ethiopia) coffee houses are exclusively owned and operated by women. Some do this work because they feel they don't have any other choice while others feel a sense of pride in the financial independence their businesses provide. All of them, however, understand working in a coffee house as a job for the in-between period — what Honwana would call "waithood" (the multifaceted transition between childhood and adulthood). This paper explores the ways that young entrepreneurial women in urban Ethiopia define their identities, their aspirations, and their relationships to development. Coffee houses represent an interesting microcosm in which to investigate larger forces of change in modern Ethiopia. The explosion in the number of coffee houses in Ethiopian cities has coincided with a period of rapid economic growth spurred by the developmental state's shift toward economic liberalisation. Despite the unprecedented recent increase in GDP, urban unemployment rates remain quite high, particularly for young women and in the current economic climate, opportunities in smaller cities are largely limited to entrepreneurial activities. The changing economic circumstances, and shifting gender relations have created a situation in which opportunities and expectations for young women are simultaneously expanding and contracting. The accomplishments of professional women in Ethiopian society coupled with the promise of "progress" through development, have allowed young women to foster grand aspirations. Yet, the realities of the economy, and the persistence of patriarchal social structures, has limited the actual possibilities for many.