Informal Industry And Social Solidarity: Research On Swill-pig Workers Of The Pearl River Delta

This paper attempts to study the life and working station of a special groups ofmigrant workers, also known as "swill-pig people" in the Pearl River Delta region. Thearticle discusses the formation mechanism of the swill-pig industry, facing the historicalchanges and also the institutional and social context. On this basis, the analysis focus onhow different factors converge and to promote and limit the specific appearance oflabor.This article analyzes and discusses the labor process theory in detail. On this basis,we believe that through focusing on the social relations of the worker, we can deepenthe understanding of China’s labor situation. The author conducted ethnographicresearch and field work in the Pearl River Delta and NAN Township, GuangxiGUIZHONG City, and collected myriad of documents and materials related to the pigindustry of local government, media, and other units of the central government.Fieldwork time beginning by2005, ending in2014. In the interactive perspective, wetry to used the swill-pig industry as a case to conduct a ethnographic observation to thesocial ecology of China.The swilling-pig is used as a traditional Chinese practice for farmers. As the PearlRiver Delta region becoming the world’s factory, she gathered a lot of labor andpopulation. Food waste become a big problem for the city. In this context, thesuburban swilling-pig industrial got prosperity. This approach has become a reliableway to solve the major food waste of cities. On this basis, urban ecological cyclesystem is re-established. Swill-Pig workers in this way successfully embedded the pigindustry into the urban industrial system. Breeding pigs’ labor process, in fact, is acontinuation of agricultural production techniques. The factors of traditional way oflabor and social solidarity work together to shape the pig industry’s face.The risks about the food of public make the central and local governments feel alot of pressure. They tend to replace the previous set of treatment based on historicalpractice of food waste by scientific knowledge. And local governments, ma rket, themass media and other subjects, in their own interests, driven by the participation of thepig’s deportation process. However, the new approach based on scientific knowledge offood waste in practice has repeatedly failed. It launched a lengthy tug of war between pig man and local government. Pig man by its market position based on structuralstrength is their another "weapon of the weak."The article concludes that condition of labor embedded in society is the key pointthat shape the PRD swill pig worker. And what is more, for the Chinese workers, wealso need to consider the relationship between their labor and social condition, whichPolanyi said embedding problem. It is the further factor that affecting the labor outlookand class formation. It implanted under the conditions of wether the social protect couldplay an important role when the labor enter the new market economy, and wether wecould promote it to continue playing new social protection. As the game betweendifferent subjects has become the norm conditions, social protection of workers not onlyneed to arrange for a national system, but also need their solidarity and the struggle oflabor.