1st Edition
The Precariat in Western China Poverty, Risks, and Influences
This book provides a comprehensive picture for understanding the experiences and dynamics of precarious workers’ in-work poverty in western China.
The research presented in this book identifies the causes and the consequences of precarious employment and in- work poverty and analyses the stakeholders’ responses to the changes in the context of employment in China’s socialist market economy. The book explains why precarious workers tend to remain outsiders to rapid socio-economic transformation and informs readers as to how people make choices, how those with different abilities adapt to the process of de-traditionalisation, and how marketisation changes people’s lifestyles, value systems, and policy designs.
Detailing empirical investigations of the experience and dynamics of workers’ precarious life, this book will appeal to students and scholars of Chinese society, social policy, and poverty.
Introduction. 1. Capability approach to the study of poverty 2. Precarious employment and precarious life 3. Family configurations, support responsibilities, and wellbeing 4. Dependency on social capital and isolation in social relations 5. The effect of social assistance policy on precarity and in-work poverty 6. Subjective wellbeing, agency, and coping strategies Conclusion: Capability deprivation in the risk society
Biography
Xueyang Ma is a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Political Science and Public Administration, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China.
