Yearning for Care? Rethinking Paternalism in Contemporary China from Migrant Worker’s Perspective

Abstract

A great deal of research work available on the situation of migrant workers in post-Mao China focuses on how the working conditions generate anger among the migrant workers, which causes strengthening of their 'horizontal' networks and their informal protection organizations. This paper shifts the attention from 'horizontal' to 'vertical' networks in factory and attempts to figure out what are the mostly likely ways to change China's state-society relationship. I argue that the factory context has strongly been shaped by parental absence and dysfunctional families following mass migration. When migrant workers' family experiences are about unrequited yearning for care and intimacy, it appears that 'fatherizing' of authorities of various kinds which are seen as (being able to be) caregivers and effective allocators of resources may be the proper response to the near constant absence of close family. Under such circumstance, the rise of individualism could paradoxically fuel paternalism.