The Contemporary Chinese Farmer-Workers' Informal Struggle For Rights And Interests In The Rule-by-Law Process

The infringement of farmer-workers'rights and interests has become a much-discussed problem from the end of 1990s, among which the delayed payment of wage appears to be most conspicuous. To protect their own rights and interests, some farmer-workers take steps legally, such as labour arbitration and lawsuits while the majority others adopt varied, informal, eye-catching ways which exclude legal means and which seem to continue. Social opinions differ sharply about farmer-workers'informal way of protecting rights and interests, which goes south by driving the chariot north with our modern legal ideal and our government's expectations. Then, how to understand and interpret the long-existing informal way of protecting rights and interests by farmer-workers? Only when we get to the back of this phenomenon, can we have a true understanding of the circumstances for farmer-workers to protect their rights and interests, give a convincing theoretical explanation of their action and provide legal countermeasures, based on real life, for government and related departments which are in urgent need of routinized countermeasures. Therefore, the task for this dissertation is to make a research on this problem.The existing research highlights "how to protect farmer-workers'rights and interests", adopting either a systematic countermeasure mode under which the formal legal system concerning the protection of farmer-workers'rights and interests is carefully discussed or a rights protecting mode under which farmer-workers'informal way or dilemma of protecting rights and interests is measured or interpreted according to the formal legal system. The existing research almost always regards farmer-workers as "the protected"and tries to seek for a resolution realized by the improvement of the legal system. Compared with the existing research, this one regards farmer-workers "social movers"and focuses on "how farmer-workers protect their own rights and interets", taking Chinese farmer-workers'informal ways of protecting rights and interests as research objects and aiming at revealing its external social structure and the internal logic of the said action.Based on but not confined to the analytic framework of "government-society", this dissertation strives to make very important modification of the said framework by the introduction of the governmental meta-field theory, subaltern theory, "process-event analysis" and "behavorial analysis of strategies", hoping to break the overall uniformity and the binary static contrariety of government and society. Normative jurisprudence method is an essential analytic instrument,since we cannot reveal the hidden social rules behind their behaviors without the legitimate judgement of the behaviors of farmer-workers, businesses and public servants according to the law system. Furthermore, based on the firsthand material obtained by on-the-spot investigation,structureless observation of the whole process of certain farmer-workers'wage demand and informal interview of farmer-workers,employing units and public servants, the author tries to interpret farmer-workers' actions of protecting rights and interests from the perspective of sociology of law. Case study is stressed in research objects, especially in the examination of the reasons and process of farmer-workers'rights and interests protection.To interpret farmer-workers'informal way of protecting rights and interests, the author answers the following three questions in this dissertation:Why have farmer-workers long preferred informal ways to formal legal ways in protecting their rights and intersts?; How do they carry out their activities of protecting rights and intersts?; How to evaluate these activities? Answers to the three questions consist of the three components with intrinsic logic for this dissertation.Chapter 1:preparation of conceptions. In order to build a logically consistent conceptional platform for the discussion in the folowing chapters,the author abstracts and extracts "informal struggle for rights and interests"from farmer-workers'activities of protecting rights and interests which exclude legal measures, such as labour arbitration and lawsuits,on the basis of existing conceptions,for instance, "protecting rights and interests in accordance with the stipulation of law"and "struggling for rights and interests".Chapter 2:to answer the first question(Why do farmer-workers prefer informal struggle for rights and interests?) Not confined by the existing unitary methodology which'stresses either structure or action, with Bourdieu's field-habitus theory,the author attempts to come up with unique interpretation for farmer-workers'informal struggle for rights and interests. After panoramically narrating the story of wage demand of a group of farmer-electricians on a building site led by their team leader, Chen Ming, the author comes to a conclusion that the action of wage demand is the habitus resulting from the interaction between social structure and farmer-workers'mental structure in the part-time job field. Habitus behavior with procedurality, flexibility and ambiguity in its practical logic, is not an either-or question of rationality or irrationality.Chapter 3-5:to answer the second question(How do farmer-workers carry out their informal struggle for rights and intersts?). Chaper 3:Based on the case study of "farmer-workers'wives'wage demand story "which actually occurred on the southwestern border,the author uncovers the game theory among the various forces---farmer-workers,labour contractors, media, local government, and businesses and its social operation rule and furthermore shows how farmer-workers, through social resources, promote moralization operation of legal relations by arousing moral forces.Chapter 4:Based on the observation and induction and analysis of farmer-workers' administrative complaints in which the labor departments,faced with farmer-workers'experiential complaints, try their utmost to solve the wage dispute through flexible use of labour supervision power formally or informally,such as an urge to pay or coordination, the author reveals the fact that farmer-workers'wage demand via administrative force is essentially a process of administrativization operation of legal relations. Chapter 5:Based on the analysis of the whole operation organism in which farmer-workers, guided by their own "legal wage demand rules", demand their wages through collective forces, the government actively coordinates in an attitude both supportive and manipulative, and the developer are obliged to fulfil extra responsibilities, the author aims at unveiling the fact farmer-workers'wage demand via collective forces is essentially a process of politicalization operation of legal relations. In a word, farmer-workers'partially or completely achieve their goals in their informal struggle for rights and interests via various governmental and social forces and in doing so they consciously or unconsciously promote delegalization operation of legal relations. Chapter6-7:to answer the third question(How to evaluate farmer-workers' informal struggle for rights and interests?). Chapter 6:governmental attitude towards farmer-workers'informal struggle for rights and interests. The author regards government as a particular field where various social forces struggle for statist capital, pointing out that the governmental attitude is indicated by that of both central and loacal governments. Under the circumstances of various social forces competing for symbolic violence over farmer-workers'informal struggle for rights and interests, the central government's stipulation of law and its expression of policies are contradictory with each other and the local government strives for a balanced point between economic development and social equality, employing unit and farmer-workers.The varied and contradictory attitude of the government leaves some room for farmer-workers'informal struggle for rights and interests. Chaper 7: against the fractured social background, to evaluate farmer-workers'informal struggle for rights and interests from the perspective of building a sound legal system. It'a natural result from the elite perspective to degrade farmer-workers'informal struggle for rights and interests to "irrational" and "legal illiterate"activities. From the subaltern perspective, we'll find that farmer-workers'informal struggle for rights and interests is a subaltern legal action with its own logic and grandiose meaning, trying to tear open the web of "interest-power structure" elaborately knitted by economic elites and local powers. The building of a sound legal sysytem in China has evolved into a phase where central and local governments, elite and subaltern calsses compete and interact.Central proposition in the conclusion:Farmer-workers'action of protecting rights and interests, which excludes labour arbitration and lawsuits, is their informal struggle for rights and interests through delegalization operation of legal relations and their subaltern legal move to tear open the web of "interest-power structure" elaborately knitted by social elites in a fractured society. In short, it's a subaltern legal move which manifests in the informal struggle for rights and interests. The proposition of this dissertation shows that in this world a group of subaltern populace is taking different legal action and endeavors to supply an actual case for the diversity and complexity of legal actions in China.