Legal Culture on Labour Disputes of Migrant Construction Workers in China

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Legal Culture on Labour Disputes of Migrant Construction Workers in China Li, Juan

Abstract

In the past 30-40 years, migrant workers have become an increasingly significant force in promoting social and legal changes in China. As such, their legal culture is worthy of study for many reasons. This study focuses on migrant construction workers’ values, ideas, opinions, and attitudes with regard to their labour disputes, in the context of economic reform and globalization. Based on an analysis of primary data collected from fieldwork undertaken in Hubei Province, this study finds that migrant construction workers’ dispute resolution primarily remains conservative and informal, and that they are more aggressive and assertive than they were in the previous decades. The primary data illustrates that imported Western legal norms, such as contract, litigation, law, etc., have so far had limited influence on the popular legal culture of Chinese migrant workers, at least in the construction industry; while traditional local values in China, such as family ethic, morality, and harmony, still play a dominant role in their daily lives.

Item Metadata

Title	Legal Culture on Labour Disputes of Migrant Construction Workers in China
Creator	Li, Juan
Contributor	University of British Columbia. Peter A. Allard School of Law; Asia Pacific Dispute Resolution
Date Issued	2018
Description	In the past 30-40 years, migrant workers have become an increasingly significant force in promoting social and legal changes in China. As such, their legal culture is worthy of study for many reasons. This study focuses on migrant construction workers’ values, ideas, opinions, and attitudes with regard to their labour disputes, in the context of economic reform and globalization. Based on an analysis of primary data collected from fieldwork undertaken in Hubei Province, this study finds that migrant construction workers’ dispute resolution primarily remains conservative and informal, and that they are more aggressive and assertive than they were in the previous decades. The primary data illustrates that imported Western legal norms, such as contract, litigation, law, etc., have so far had limited influence on the popular legal culture of Chinese migrant workers, at least in the construction industry; while traditional local values in China, such as family ethic, morality, and harmony, still play a dominant role in their daily lives.
Subject	labour disputes; legal culture; migrant workers; labour dispute resolution
Geographic Location	China
Genre	Working Paper
Type	Text
Language	eng
Date Available	2018-01-23
Provider	Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Rights	Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International
DOI	10.14288/1.0363145
URI	http://hdl.handle.net/2429/64447
Affiliation	Non UBC
Citation	APDR Working Paper Series, Vol. 4, no. 2
Peer Review Status	Unreviewed
Scholarly Level	Faculty
Rights URI	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Aggregated Source Repository	DSpace

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