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"Drawing on the life stories of 266 migrants in South China, Choi and Peng examine the effect of mass rural-to-urban migration on family and gender relationships with a specific focus on changes in men and masculinities. They show how migration has forced migrant men to renegotiate their roles as lovers, husbands, fathers and sons. They also reveal how migrant men make masculine compromises: they strive to preserve the gender boundary and their symbolic dominance within the family by making concessions on marital power and domestic division of labor, and by redefining filial piety and fatherhood. The stories of these migrant men and their families reveal another side to China's sweeping economic reform, modernization and grand social transformations."--Provided by publisher

This article explores changing strategies of managerial control in a labour-intensive factory in South China at a time of labour shortage. It describes power relationships between capital and migrant labour under changing labour market conditions, migrant cohorts and global business environment, and analyses a new paternalist managerial strategy named 'humanized management' and workers' reactions to it. Although 'humanized management', as part of East Asian paternalism, advocates mutual respect, care and reciprocity between management and labour, it constructs workers as irresponsible, spoiled children needing to be led, moved, touched, taught and ruled. Its human focus notwithstanding, the new strategy did not result in substantial reforms of managerial despotism, nor did the factory institute any welfare programs for workers. Because of these discrepancies between the ideological avowals and practical application of 'humanized management', the new approach was disregarded by workers, who preferred to rely on individual measures such as threats to quit, or collective action, to win concessions from management. The study provides new insight into the changing relationship between capital and migrant workers in South China and informs the debate in industrial sociology and human resource management research about the efficacy of East Asian paternalist management in improving capital–labour relationships.

AbstractComparing ethnographic and interview data in three contrasting production arrangements in a labour-intensive factory in South China, this article argues that while the mobile phone constitutes a new contested terrain on the shop floor and facilitates control and resistance between capital and labour simultaneously, the dynamics of control and resistance is contingent upon the exact arrangements of production. While the management strictly prohibit line operators in the assembly line department from using their mobile phones, they turn a blind eye towards mobile phone use among workers in the hardware department, and mandate mobile workers who are not fixed at work stations in both departments to use mobile phones. Diverse managerial control tactics have generated different patterns of worker resistance. Workers in the assembly line department employ strategies to evade managerial surveillance and continue to use mobile phones at work covertly. They also contest the double standards of mobile phone use displayed by the management. Workers in the hardware department challenge the boundaries of legitimate mobile phone use, and mobile workers use tactics to escape being tracked down by the management via their mobile phones. Mobile phones also facilitate the strategy of resistance through exit among all workers.