Contesting Citizenship Through and Beyond the Law: Migrant Worker NGOs and ‘acts of citizenship’

"Transforming citizenship: NGOs, Labour and Space in China" - talk by Gosia Jakimów

Abstract

In contemporary China, law is often seen as the state’s tool of control. In relation to migrant worker NGOs, many studies have argued that these NGOs’ engagement with law and ‘rights defence’ entrenches such mechanisms of state’s control. However, few studies have discussed the role of law in the processes of labour NGOs-led citizenship transformation in China.

Based on an extensive ethnographic fieldwork among migrant worker NGOs conducted between 2011 and 2016, this article argues that law is an important tool of social and political transformation. It does so by analysing the ambiguous relationship between law and citizenship in China. First, this presentation conveys of citizenship as a process constituted through ‘acts’ which question the established citizenship discourse, practice and rights, rather than in its traditional rendering, as a state of possession of legal rights. Second, the presentation points to the law as an important site of such contestation, as the law can empower migrant workers to engage in various forms of activist citizenship, such as establishment of NGOs, and help these NGOs to form active citizens through training in law and representation in courts. This article argues that in a state where free expression is blocked, open grievances unwelcomed and politics a taboo word, the state laws can become a fluid site of citizenship contestation, and while engagement with them can reinforce the existing regime, it can also help to transform it. As such, this study critically applies the ‘acts of citizenship’ framework to authoritarian context, arguing for the acknowledgment of the ambiguity of law as a tool in social and political contestation in contemporary China. 

Speaker Bio

Gosia Jakimów is an assistant professor in East Asian Politics at School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University. She joined the SGIA department in 2018 after holding a lecturer post at University of Sheffield. She was awarded her PhD in 2015 from University of Manchester. Her research focuses on the question of citizenship and civil society in China, critical citizenship theory, transnational civil society, political economy of labour in China, and the normative element of EU-China relations, with special interest in the role of Belt and Road Initiative in normative changes in Central-Eastern Europe. Her research in citizenship studies is based on ethnographic fieldwork in China conducted among migrant worker NGOs, international NGOs and international organisations, such as UNDP and EU. She is a member of an international network of Chinese and Western scholars focusing on a question of citizenship in China, based at the Sun-Yat Sen University in Guangzhou.

About the Human Rights, Development and Global Justice Series

Our series aims to create an open, interdisciplinary academic platform for the discussion of issues related to human rights, development and global justice. Special attention is given to the global south, but not to the exclusion of other places.

We hope to generate exchanges furthering academic insight and creativity, to strengthen the School’s connections with scholars around the world, and to enrich undergraduate and postgraduate teaching curricula among the School’s wide offering of modules related to the jurisprudence of human rights, transnational human rights, and global justice more widely.

The events series is currently convened by Professor Eva Pils. It is supported by funding provided by The Dickson Poon School of Law. For information about other events in the series, please visit the King's College London website.