Young and Restless in China

With the rise of the gig economy and short-term, task-based labor, what happens to the largest workforce in the world?

Contrary to the stereotypical portrayal of the Chinese rural-to-urban migrant workers as hard­working, driven, and filial pious, this book explores the lives of a new generation of migrant workers, mostly male born in the 1990s, who are disappointed by the exploitative factories and opt for short-term employment.At a time when precarious labor is on the rise on a global scale, Young and Restless in China explores both the institutional and the individual processes that lead to informal employment and the clustering of the 'great gods' (dashen) – migrant workers, mostly male and born in the 1990s, who are disappointed by exploitative factories and thus choose short-term employment and day labor – in urban migrant communities. Based on ethnographic studies in two of those communities in China, this book analyzes the gendered and gendering aspects of labor, reveals the different processes of precarization among workers, and discusses the role of the diverse intermediaries who both sustain workers' livelihoods and reproduce their precarity.