ILPC 2026

With the rise of a new working class in China, debates have used cohort analysis of industrial disputes to claim that the new generation of peasant-workers are now increasingly proletarianised through their class action. Concomitantly, their old ownership rights in the countryside have or are disappearing, making any return to petty-ownership status as farmers impossible. This double movement, dispossession of land rights and possession of industrial worker consciousness, has seen China change its class relations. A complication to this story is the construction of space in China, and disconnection between urbanisation and proletarianisation because of the hukou system of household registration and the one-party state seeking to monopolise control over all labour institutions. Space is contested in particular ways in China. A further complicating ingredient of this story is signified by Lee’s work (2016), which blends precarity of employment rights in the West with the idea of precarity of migrant workers in China. This suggests a class-based or structural basis to marginalisation and subordination of the new migrant working class. This paper explores the way space is politicised in China and debates around class for the new generation of migrant workers. Through an extensive literature review, we also look at the debate on precarity, which we consider confuses distinctions between status and class. Deconstructing the relationship between space, class and precarity, we offer more clarity on the language on class and place in China. Reference Lee, C.K., 2016. Precarization or Empowerment? Reflections on Recent Labor Unrest in China. The Journal of Asian Studies, 75(02), pp.317-333.