Neoliberalism In China

The experiences of Mexicans migrating to jobs in the meat processing industry the U.S., Mexicans migrating to low-paid service sector jobs that directly and indirectly support the information technology industry in Silicon Valley, and people migrating from rural China to jobs in plants assembling electronics in the urban southeast of the country all will be used to show the negative effect of neoliberalism on people involved in long distance migration.

An economic influence similarity between the three groups of people migrating is that they all face a form of class transformation regarding their shifts in class trajectories. All these people were originally from small scale farming operations in a rural area and were forced to migrate to big

Certain cultural pressures were pushed upon these people to make their habits and routines more consistent with the interests of capital. This was done to change the way people behave, as well as their values and beliefs, so that eventually they would regulate themselves towards reproducing and promoting the capitalist system’s standards as well. The media was used discursively, in both China and the U.S., to promote the idea that one had look and act a certain way to have self-fulfillment. This made a lot of people in rural areas of China dream of having a better life and being able to have all the modern luxuries. Images of Dagongmei (working girls) who were active in searching out love and had an active role in society were presented to the female population of China is an extremely idealized way. Coupled with non-discursive means of other citizens, the fact that other citizens in the city would treat you better if you followed those standards, made most women from rural area strive to adopt these qualities. They wanted to belong to the world where they oversaw their own lives. In addition, they tried to be modern to fit into their new jobs that they have gotten by migrating to the urban area. In the United States the media painted pictures of what an ideal consumer and worker would be like. Also, through the non-discursively of the state by as the police and the INS their routines and habits were changed.

Symbolic violence maintains its effect through the mis-recognition of power relations situated in the social matrix of a given field. Two companies, Foxconn and The Meteor Electronics Company, will be used to show the types of symbolic violence these workers had to face. It is important to know that much of the workforce employed by these companies were women, coming mainly from rural areas in response to China’s shift towards export industrialization. Consequently, women workers, mainly single and under the age of 35, made up 70% of the workforce in most of China’s light industries, like electronics. In fact, nearly 75% of MEC (The Meteor Electronics Company) workers were female. The first form of symbolic violence we will look at is the name used to identify these women, dagongmei. Dagong means working for the boss, and Mei means younger sister, put together it signifies a lower status based on gender, marital status, and age. Dagongmei signifies a lesser identity of a female worker, yet it’s a term freely applied to and accepted by the workers. This term is a reminder to the workers that they are of a lower status in society and should be happy and grateful to be employed. The pride and respect gained by having a job is overshadowed by the implications of the term. Another type of