Dispersive Containment: a comparative case study of labor politics in central China

Why is there no large-scale labor movement out of intense labor conflicts in current China? Based on a comparative case study of two groups of workers-state workers vs. temporary workers-this paper is an attempt to explore the concrete processes and mechanisms of workers' struggles-how they navigated among street protests, office petitions and court prosecutions through their interaction with state agencies. The argument is that different workers obtained different symbolic rewards instead of material concessions, based on their different social positions and historical trajectories. Unlike the classical 'fragmentation' argument which attributes the working class's inaction to its internal divisions, this argument focuses on the interaction between the differentiated workers and the local state agents, during which the workers lost their radical momentum and became subjected to the state's peaceful taming based on the workers' differences. This is a process called 'dispersive containment', i.e. dissipating the labor conflicts through divergent symbolic treatment of working-class protest without granting material rewards to them.