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From Being a Problem to Having Problems: Discourse, Governmentality and Chinese Migrant Workers

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Abstract

This article analyzes the political effects of the new discourse on Chinese migrant workers that emerged in the 2000s, and how this discourse is contested by an alternative discourse. The article demonstrates how the new discourse has facilitated socialist-liberal governance by transforming migrant workers into self-governing individuals. Moreover, the article argues that socialist-liberal governmentality is based on a post-political understanding that promotes a society without structural differences and reformulates social problems as individual deficiencies. Based on a discourse analysis of Chinese newspaper coverage, the article analyzes how this post-political myth is contested by an alternative understanding of society that repoliticizes migrant workers and their problems. In conclusion, the analysis points to how media discourses can contest governmental projects.

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Notes

  1. Elements such as freedom, government at a distance, desire, and individual responsibility are associated with both liberal and neoliberal governmentality. While it is difficult to draw a sharp distinction between these two forms of governmentality, I have chosen to use the term liberal because other elements commonly associated with neoliberalism, such as autonomous markets and lack of state intervention, are not found in China. See [41] for a discussion on China and neoliberalism and [31] for the argument that many of the elements associated with (neo)liberal governmentality can also be found in other governing cultures, and are therefore not uniquely (neo)liberal.

  2. For more than two decades, hukou reform has been announced, most recently as part of the national urbanization plan released in March 2014. While such plans could make it easier for migrant workers to obtain an urban hukou, scholars have argued that reforms will only benefit a minority of migrants, as they favor educated migrants and migrants living in towns and small cities [6, 7].

  3. All translations of quotes from the analyzed articles are mine.

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  1. Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo, P.O. Box 1096, Blindern 0317, Oslo, Norway

    Marielle Stigum Gleiss

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Gleiss, M.S. From Being a Problem to Having Problems: Discourse, Governmentality and Chinese Migrant Workers. J OF CHIN POLIT SCI 21, 39–55 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11366-015-9356-0

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