Convenors: Minh Nguyen (Bielefeld), Jingyu Mao (Edinburgh)

This is the final conference of our ERC-funded research project „WelfareStruggles“. With two ethnographic studies and a comparative social policy analysis implemented since 2019, this project seeks to understand the moral-political dynamics of welfare provision for workers in global factories of China and Vietnam. We enquire into how the welfare provision is shaped by a politics of care specific to the two countries’ similar polity of market socialism. With this aim, we seek to uncover the politics and struggles between state, market and other institutions involved in the care of migrant labour at global factories. Thereby, we employ a broad definition of care as a process aimed at sustaining and reproducing bodies, selves and relationships. Our findings indicate that these politics and struggles are part and parcel of the contradiction and ambivalence in the moral and political economic landscape of market socialism. In turn, they shape both how the social question is asked and how working people negotiate available forms of social protection to ensure livelihoods and wellbeing in an increasingly commodified context. In this international workshop, we seek to connect these findings of the project with recent research conducted by other scholars in Vietnam and China on issues related to welfare provision and labour mobility, especially in and around global factories. We aim to facilitate an intensive discussion and stimulating scholarly exchange on the issues raised by engaging a mix of established and emerging scholars working on these issues in Vietnam and China.

Contact:
Sabine Mende, Group and Conference Support
zif-conferencesupport@uni-bielefeld.de