Migrant Labour in Global Factories: Care, Welfare and Government Under Market Socialism in China and Vietnam

The labour of hundreds of millions of internal migrant workers plays a crucial role for China and Vietnam's national development and the expansion of global production chains in these market socialist countries. As the Communist party states have been promoting both marketization and welfare expansion since their respective reforms began, the contradictions between the commodification and the social protection of labour that coexist in these polities lead to significant obstacles to the migrant workers' welfare and wellbeing in the post-reform era.Bringing into focus the connection between the reconfiguration of labour and changes in the two countries' welfare systems, Migrant Labour in Global Factories analyses how these contradictions shape the care of their huge migrant labour forces. It explores how they unfold in the historical and political contexts of both countries, bringing a range of relevant theories about welfare and social policymaking to bear on the features of the market socialist economy. The book argues that the evolving welfare systems in China and Vietnam fail to address meaningfully the social consequences of labour commodification in contexts where neoliberal development is instrumentalized to serve the political control and legitimacy of the party states. This is often at the cost of long-term and sustainable social policies for migrant labour in global factories.