Overview
- Explores rising labor unrest in China as it integrates into the global political economy
- Draws on extensive fieldwork in Europe, the US, and China to highlight the role of activists, operating at multiple levels, in improving Chinese labor conditions since 1989
- Indicates the effect China, a politically and economically strong state, can have on transnational labor activism
Part of the book series: Non-Governmental Public Action (NGPA)
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
This book explores rising labor unrest in China as it integrates into the global political economy. The book highlights the tensions present between China’s efforts to internationalize and accept claims to respect freedom of association rights, and its continuing insistence on a restrictive, and often punitive, approach to worker organizations. The author examines how the global labor movement can support the improvement of working conditions in Chinese factories. The book presents a novel multi-level approach capturing how trade unions and labor rights NGOs have mobilized along different pathways while attempting to influence labor standards in Chinese supply chains since 1989: within the ILO, within the European Union, leveraging global brands or directly supporting domestic labor rights NGOs. Based on extensive fieldwork in Europe, the US and China, the book shows that activists, by operating at multiple scales, were on some occasions able to support improvements over time. It also indicates how a politically and economically strong state such as China can affect transnational labor activism, by directly and indirectly undermining the opportunities that organized civil societies have to participate in the evolving global labor governance architecture.
Reviews
“This innovative study aptly blends different but thus far disconnected bodies of literature to analyze the various pathways, including transnational political activism, to enhance labor rights in China. The book enriches our understanding of a complex and multi-layered system of interaction that leads to a slow and selective convergence between Chinese labor politics and international standards.” (Dieter Rucht, Professor Emeritus, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin and the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany)
“Social movement studies have often worked under the implicit assumption that protests only develops in democracy. This rich analysis of labour activism in China convincingly points instead at the multilevel dynamics that allow for new labour transnationalism. It shows how different actors build networks across places of production and consumption within the complex multilevel architecture of global labour.” (Donatella della Porta, Professor of Political Science, Scuola Normale Superiore, Italy)
“Labor rights in China have been in the global spotlight for nearly three decades. While most research focuses on a single great hope for improving workers’ rights, this book provides a valuable account of the multiple paths that global reformers have taken, from corporate social responsibility to diplomacy to the promotion of civil society.” (Tim Bartley, Associate Professor of Sociology, Ohio State University, USA)
“This is a theoretically-informed and empirically-grounded book. Sabrina Zajak offers a timely account on how multi-level actors interact with each other to shape labor rights in China. It makes substantial contributions to globalization, China and labor studies.” (Chris King-Chi Chan, Associate Professor of Sociology, City University of Hong Kong)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Sabrina Zajak is Junior Professor of Globalization Conflicts, Social Movements, and Labor at the Institute for Social Movements, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. She is Founding Member of the Institute for Protest ad Social Movement Research in Berlin and Head of the research group "Transnational Alliances between Social Movements and Trade Unions in Europe". Her other research focuses on protests in Germany and pathways of labor rights activism between Asia and Europe in a comparative perspective.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Transnational Activism, Global Labor Governance, and China
Authors: Sabrina Zajak
Series Title: Non-Governmental Public Action
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95022-5
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan New York
eBook Packages: Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-349-95021-8Published: 19 January 2017
Softcover ISBN: 978-1-349-95707-1Published: 15 July 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-1-349-95022-5Published: 19 January 2017
Series ISSN: 2946-2916
Series E-ISSN: 2946-2924
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XI, 286
Number of Illustrations: 10 b/w illustrations
Topics: Public Policy, History of China, Labour Law/Social Law, Asian Politics, Globalization, Trade