I can't be happy anywhere. No matter where I go, I can't calm myself down and keep my mind balanced.
Asin, a 32-year-old working-class worker, said that he works in a factory that supplies toys for Disney.
If the first generation of factory women workers experienced torture, anxiety and physical pain, screaming like a female worker A Ying and turning their bodies into weapons against an era, then at the beginning of the new century, the second generation of migrant workers have made up their minds to take action and carry out collective struggle.
The increasingly complicated struggle of the new working class in China has reached the second contract worker. Edward Thompson wrote in his classic The Formation of the British Working Class that class formation is a "dynamic process", which depends on both subjective initiative and objective conditions, and it embodies the concept of historical relations. The history of world labor tells us that the formation and maturity of the working class are often realized among the second and third generation migrant workers who enter industrial cities. The limits of torture, difficulties and dissatisfaction in working life will not appear on the first generation of workers, but will come to the next generation. This is the process of proletarialization. By depriving agricultural workers of the means of production and means of subsistence, they are transformed into industrial workers in cities. In fact, this is a theme that runs through the history of world capitalism.
In the process of China becoming the world's factory and industrialized society, the common phenomenon in the history of world capitalism has been reappeared. However, what makes China special is that its proletarian process is unique: in order to integrate China's socialist system into the global economy, migrant workers can't stay in cities, even though they come to cities. Because the new working class is deprived of the right to survive in the workplace, industrialization and urbanization are two extremely unrelated processes for them. In a word, it is the spatial separation of urban production and rural reproduction that forms the proletarialization process of migrant workers in China.
In this way, an unfinished proletarialization (or semi-proletarialization) process has emerged, which has led to a deeper sense of incompleteness of the second generation of migrant workers, that is, to become "migrant workers" (quasi-workers or semi-workers in industrial society). Migrant workers who are troubled by the sense of incompleteness are often trapped in a wandering state in the physiological and psychological sense. In our research in Shenzhen and Dongguan in the past ten years, almost all workers-most of them are between the ages of 16 and 32-have the experience of job-hopping after working for one year or less. Most people have worked in the city for several years, and only a few people think they have a chance to stay in the city. For the second generation of migrant workers, the door of urban and industrial civilization is still closed. Migrant workers have nowhere to go and nowhere to go back, as a worker said in his poem, "You said your life was doomed to drift." If you choose the road of working, you are doomed to be useless, because you are neither a farmer nor a worker. You will always be a migrant worker, a person trapped between farmers and workers-a social identity that will never be completed.
Asin's story: the internal injury of class
A Xin was born in 1977 and grew up in the reform era. 1998 after failing in the college entrance examination for the third time, A Xin, despite his father's objection, decided to give up repeating: "I know a person who failed to repeat seven or eight times and finally collapsed. I can't go on like this, maybe I should try another way out. " Asin is also ashamed that she has been relying on her sister's financial support. A Xin's sister, 1994, went to work in Shenzhen after graduating from junior high school.
Going out to work can not only earn money to support the family, but also cultivate a person's personal independence and help him realize his freedom. Farmers are generally eager to work in cities and pursue freedom, and this desire is increasingly strong among the new generation of people. In China, proletarianization is largely self-driven. Asin was born in a village with more than 200 families in Henan Province. Almost all the working-age people in the village have gone out to work, and more than a dozen families have even moved to other places.
From 65438 to 0998, A Xin finally found a job in a small factory in Shenzhen. The working conditions here are as cruel as those in other factories. After the probation period, the salary rose to 8 yuan for one day. This small factory is responsible for the production of TV antenna converters. A Xin works here from 7 am to 1 1 every day, with only half an hour's rest at noon. What is more unbearable than high-intensity labor is the way the supervisor treats the workers. On one occasion, the supervisor asked Asin to move an electric welding machine on the ground. The welding machine has just melted, so the temperature is very high. As a novice, Asin didn't know the danger and went to pick up the parts without gloves. As a result, all the fingers were badly burned. Asin recalled, "At that time, the supervisor stood by. He smiled and watched me get hurt, and didn't even help me dress the wound. After he finished laughing, he ordered me to do other things. " After working in this factory for seven days, Asin was fired.
The reform has given this generation the freedom to move, and they can freely choose whether to work for foreign companies or private enterprises. The reform released this generation's desire to change themselves, but in order to realize this desire, they had to sell their labor to the factory owner. It's no secret anymore. The dialectical point of reform lies in: on the one hand, the reform liberated farmers, thus turning them into labor; On the other hand, the reform has restricted farmers' freedom in industrial cities. Asin is free to leave or continue working. But once he started to choose freely, he immediately found that he lost the freedom to move forward or backward. He is a stranger in this city and a permanent traveler. He soon lost the feeling of "home" and felt that he had nowhere to go.
Asin went on to tell us about his first job in the factory:
On the seventh day, several fellow villagers who worked together couldn't stand it anymore and decided to resign. One of them asked me to go with them. But I didn't agree. I want to work until I get paid. We talked at the gate of the workshop for about ten minutes. Later, the boss saw it and said something to the supervisor. When I returned to the workshop, the supervisor said to me "You don't have to come tomorrow" without asking anything. Then I told the villagers who introduced me to this job that I was fired. After working for seven days, they should have given me 49 yuan, but they didn't give me a penny. The fellow villager said, "How dare you ask for money! It would be nice not to be fined. "
Asin worked for seven days and left the factory with his luggage without getting anything.
I didn't have a temporary residence permit during that time. I wandered in the street, afraid to take the main road or the alley for fear of being robbed. In the evening, I have nowhere to go except to the cinema ... 1 1 After that, the cinema began to show evening movies, and the tickets were only 3 yuan. So this screening hall, which can accommodate 100 people, became a place where forty or fifty people slept. Sometimes so many people sleep that they can't even stretch their legs. By 6 o'clock or 7 o'clock in the morning, we must leave. So I slept in the cinema for more than 20 days until I found my next job.
The story of Asin represents the experience of most migrant workers working in cities for the first time. A Min, a female worker working in an electronics factory in Shenzhen, said, "What I learned from my first job is that we have no rights. The boss has the right to ask you to leave, but you have no right at all. "
Point of no return-a new form of enclosure
"Jump, jump, jump, some people say that I dance the dance of survival.
Jump, jump, jump, we jump in pain and anger. ...
Who put our personality, dignity ...
These bony arms were unscrewed.
Crawling helplessly in a foreign land. "
-Write Grasshopper Again was written by a young worker in 2006.
In the spring of 2000, after working in Shenzhen for two years, Asin decided to return to his hometown. He told us, "Even if I work hard every day, people still don't treat me like a human being." I can't see the future of the city. What can I expect? I have no money and nothing else to rely on. I would rather go home. "Asin has no place in the city, stay and don't see any future and future.
Two generations of working class have been faced with a difficult choice, whether to go out to work or stay in the countryside. The State Council Development Research Center's survey on the employment situation of returning migrant workers in 2007 showed that in 30/kloc-0 villages in 28 provinces, returning migrant workers accounted for 23% of the total number of migrant workers, and 16% of returning migrant workers participated in setting up rural enterprises or starting farming.
Asin told us about his experience of returning to his hometown:
When I got home, the village was busy planting seeds. I'm excited about the plan in my mind. I contracted a wasteland to do something. I can't sleep even at night. My mind is always thinking about my plan. If I can expand the scale of cash crops, I can make a fortune and prove to my parents and other villagers that going home is also a good choice.
Asin began to mobilize his relatives and neighbors, and someone provided him with tractors and labor. He can probably get 20 acres of cultivated land for his business plan. Asin decided to plant watermelon, because this kind of fruit is easy to manage and sells well in the market. However, as often happens in rural areas, unexpected events have happened. Because of the heavy rain for several days, watermelons ripen too fast and rot in the ground before they are sold. Asin's father is very experienced. He knew the risks of agricultural production and market fluctuation, so he opposed Asin's contracting plan from the beginning. He advised others to take back the land behind Asin's back. In just a few months, Asin spent thousands of dollars in savings.
Asin's experience is by no means an individual phenomenon. Less than half of the migrant workers who decided to go back to their hometowns to do small businesses eventually returned to the countryside. Among those who eventually returned to their hometowns to farm, most of the people we saw in Shenzhen and Dongguan ended in failure.
Asin had no choice but to leave his hometown again. He was badly hit when he came home this time. But I can only bury my pain in my heart and come to Shenzhen again alone. On the train to Shenzhen, he happened to know that it was very profitable to make templates in Shenzhen, so he entered a factory producing handicrafts with a monthly salary of 800 yuan. After the probation period, the salary has increased. When he worked in this factory for the third year (2002), Asin could get 65,438+0 every month, 700 yuan. Sometimes overtime pay can earn 3000 yuan.
Asin is lucky to be a skilled teacher with high income. However, I don't know why, he has never been happy at work. If the pursuit of material returns is the common aspiration of the working class, it is not so important for Asin. Work has lost its sense of meaning for Asin, and it has also caused cracks in his life: "No matter where I work, I am not happy, my heart will never be calm, and I always feel that I should do something big."
The second generation of migrant workers had very limited choices before: "When they came out to work, they were homesick. But when I got home, I wanted to work again. " Only a few migrant workers are willing to return to their hometowns for development, but like A Xin, they can't go back. Most of the second generation of migrant workers have realized that it is "impossible to develop" and never "go back" to the countryside. For migrant workers, "farming without money" has become a kind of knowledge. In fact, the cost of building a new house, the cost of marriage, the cost of education and medical care, and the cost of purchasing daily necessities are all earned by working. Except for three meals, social reproduction of labor, including housing, clothing, education and medical care, almost all depends on the money they earn from working.
The countryside has been hollowed out, both materially and spiritually. The second generation of migrant workers grew up in an era with relatively good living conditions. Their horizons are broader, and they are more interested in what color hair to dye and what style clothes to wear. But once they embark on the journey of working, it is difficult for them to find their way home. Migrant workers in their teens and twenties, both men and women, usually don't know how many acres of land they have at home and how much money they can earn by farming. In any case, they are more eager to stay in this city. They know that working for the boss is not a long-term solution, so many people dream of becoming a boss one day. The unattainable personal expectations of the second generation of migrant workers, as well as the endless setbacks they encounter when they travel back and forth between rural areas and cities, inevitably lead to anger and dissatisfaction that have nowhere to vent.
conclusion
The reform has recreated China and made China a "world factory". At the same time, the reform also recreated the new working class politics in China. Along a special proletarian road, the second generation of migrant workers have gradually realized their class status and will participate in a series of collective actions. The quasi-social status of the second generation of migrant workers makes them more angry and dissatisfied than the first generation. They realized that they had been completely cornered: the city could not stay and their hometown could not go back. Spiritual and substantial "enclosure" is closely related to the unfinished proletarian process of migrant workers in China, which is caused by the spatial isolation of urban production and rural reproduction.
Asin's story is very representative, because it deepens our understanding of rural life and workshop struggle. Asin's rough experience is not only personal, but also contains profound social significance. His experience is related to both the factory and the countryside. A Xin's opinionated father tried his best to prevent his son from returning to his hometown to start a business, which may be quite special. However, judging from the failure of starting a business in his hometown, Asin's experience is similar to that of many migrant workers. Failure forced them to go out to work again. This process is endless, and the process of proletarialization can never be completed. This has formed a vicious circle: the reform and the dual division of urban and rural areas have aroused people's desire to flee the countryside, but after fleeing, migrant workers can only work hard in factories. When they encounter setbacks in their work, they often have the idea of returning to China. But for migrant workers who return home, they have nowhere to go, and only go out to work can they survive. This vicious circle brings a series of cruel life experiences to migrant workers, which inevitably leads to angry and rebellious politics.