The cycle of commodification: migrant labour, welfare, and the market in global China and Vietnam

Authors

Jake Lin, The University of Texas Rio Grande ValleyFollow
Minh T. N. Nguyen, University of Bielefeld

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

7-27-2021

Abstract

China and Vietnam have experienced waves of labour and welfare reform since both countries shifted to market socialism, pursuing a development model that depends on the labour of millions of rural–urban migrants in global factories. Their similar development trajectories are productive for theorizing the relationship between labour and welfare. This article conceptualises the two countries’ distinctive regime of migrant labour welfare as integral to a cycle of commodifcation that encompasses the overlapping processes of commodifcation, de-commodifcation and recommodifcation of labour. After decades of collectivized labour under state socialism, the cycle begins with the commodifcation of labour through market reforms that led to mass rural–urban migration and the rise of the global factory alongside the dismantling of the former socialist welfare system. It was then followed by decommodifcation attempts aimed at providing forms of social protection that ofset the labour precarity caused by decades of labour market liberalisation. Despite the emergence of new universal welfare programs, the market has increasingly intruded into social protection, especially through fnancialized products targeted at the labouring masses who must compensate for the failings of public welfare programs. As such, these welfare regimes are undergoing a process of re-commodifcation in which the protection of labour is re-embedded into the market as a commodity to be consumed by the migrant workers with their meagre wages. The “cycle of commodifcation” ofers an analytical framework to understand welfare regimes as a social and political feld that keeps evolving in response to the changing global valuation of labour.

Comments

© The Author(s) 2021

Recommended Citation

Lin, J., Nguyen, M.T.N. The cycle of commodification: migrant labour, welfare, and the market in global China and Vietnam. GPPG 1, 321–339 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s43508-021-00021-y

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Publication Title

Global Public Policy and Governance

DOI

10.1007/s43508-021-00021-y