Labor Contractor Consumption And Identity In Yongkang City Labor Contractor Cases

For over30years of reform and opening-up, China’s social class structure has changed, and social mobility has also increased noticeably. The new rich groups which are represented by the labor contractors flow from the lower class to a higher class in society. Their social identity has changed. However, the labor contractor generated a type of behavior "amphibious consumption" which doesn’t accord with their identity. This phenomenon can’t be explained neither from the theory of social stratification, or consumption of building in the current consumption of identity theory.The purpose of this study is to take the contractor in Yongkang as an illustration to discuss the relationship between the labor contractors’consumption pattern and identity caused by the change of their identity from the perspective of social mobility on the basis of the previous research. To study the relationship between the consumption pattern and identity from the perspective of social mobility, and combine the theory of social stratification and consumption of building together makes clear the social structure, especially the class structure’s restriction to the consumers’behavior, and also emphasizes the consumption initiative’s role in constructing the social identity processes.This paper using a structured interview way to investigate the contractors in Yongkang, found the social phenomenon of amphibious consumption characteristics and duality identity. The results of the study show that during the process of changing from a migrant worker to a boss, the labor contractor produces duality identity because of their less contribution to economy、low cultural level and professional identity crisis, that is they agree with their double identities of both being boss and migrant workers. This duality identity is the root cause of the amphibious consumption for labor contractor. Under the duality identity, on the one hand, the labor contractor play migrant workers role in daily life, and consuming according to the long-term socialization acquisition of thrifty habits, on the other hand, as the boss identity, the labor contractor need to consume luxuriously in the workplace environment according to the boss’s value standard. This is a consumer behavior restricted by social structure, and at the same time it is a process of actively building their identity. That is consumer identity is consumer’s actively social identity building under the restriction of the social structure.