Migrant worker museums in China

Public Cultures of Migrant Labour in State and Grassroots Initiatives

Bibliographic Data

ID3649835
AuthorsJ Qian (0000-0001-9638-3808, University of Hong Kong), Eric Florence (0000-0002-7004-9120, University of Liège, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume47
Issue12
Pages2706-2724
Publication date2021-09-10
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueNew Community (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0047-9586 • E-ISSN: 1469-9451
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1369183x.2020.1739373
OpenAlexW3016265897
LanguageEN
Citations received16
References cited40

This paper offers a comparative investigation of two rural migrant workers museums, one state-run in Shenzhen and another grassroots project in the suburbs of Beijing. We take museums as institutions of the politics of recognition and identity politics par excellence, and as fields of forces through which the matrices of political economy, state formation and popular culture are played out. The theoretical problematiques that frame our analyses are twofold. On the one hand, what are the ways in which the post-Mao political economy and socioeconomic changes are represented in the symbolic rituals enacted in the museums? On the other hand, how such representational schemes cast light on issues of labour, technologies of the self, and the collective identity of migrant workers? We argue that the Shenzhen Museum, albeit providing idealising and heroizing portrays of migrant workers, reifies a development- and market-centred view of the city that is deliberately oblivious to the structural roots of migrant marginality. In contrast, the Beijing Museum offers a powerful counternarrative to the centrality of capital logic. By prioritising migrants’ lived experiences of labouring and living, it underscores claims for fair evaluation of migrant labour, welfare protection, dignity of labouring bodies, and collective voice and identity

Aesthetics · China · Collective identity · Cultural capital · Dignity · Economic growth · Economics · Flourishing · Geography · Grassroots · Migrant workers · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Symbolic capital · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Gender Studies · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy