In China. Laborers, Migrant Workers

More than a century ago, attracted by the "Gold Mountain Dreams", a large number of Chinese workers entered the American labor market. They intensified the competition of labor price, changed the labor relations, and eventually stirred up the debates on indecent work competition,"Yellow Peril", Chinese Exclusion Acts and etc.Nowadays, Chinese Americans have been constructed into "Model Minority" who are widely acclaimed by mainstream Americans. However, with the aggravated globalization and the emergence of financial crises in the West, arguments on the merits and demerits of "Made in China" are unabated on one hand, factory audits in the light of SA8000or the Chinese Labor Law are augmenting on the other hand. Once again, antidumping measures and trade protectionism are clouded in the moral and human rights discourses by the issue of Chinese labor's indecent work.Although the denouncement of Honan migrants and Yi ethnic migrant workers in the labor market of the Pearl River Delta is less impressive recently, it does not mean that the social and cultural discriminations against people's ethnic and provincial origins have vanished. Once the labor shortage is eased, these people will duly become the condemned and the excluded again. The thesis argues that there is a continuation between the images of Chinese migrant workers in the19th century America and those of "Made in China" in the current American society. It is also believed that some similaries can be detected between the images of Chinese migrant workers in the19th century America and those of the nonlocal rural workers as well as the ethnic migrant workers in China today.An analysis of the vicissitude of images may shed light on how competitive and segmented labor market is created through people's habitus differences, labor cost optimization, general standards of labor wages, citizenship, employment rights, hiring ethics, and norms of human rights. In other words, the so-called market, class and stratum, transferred into identity stereotypes of nationalities, ethnicities, and provinces, are embedded in specific cultural elements like nationality provisions, household registration policies, labor standards, values, discourses, preferences, rights and interests, senses of fairness and opportunity.It is hoped that the discussions will help make out the relationships between knowledge and power, social reality and social imaginary, social stratification and ethnic/provincial identities. A review on the images of the Chinese labor in the19th century America, the rural migrant workers of China, and "Made in China" may offer a better understanding of nation-states, the globalized labor market, and the human rights charges.