Suicides, excessive overtime, hostility and violence on the factory floor in China. Drawing on vivid testimonies from rural migrant workers, student interns, managers and trade union staff, Dying for an iPhone is a devastating expose of two of the world's most powerful companies: Foxconn and Apple. As the leading manufacturer of iPhones, iPads and Kindles, and employing one million workers in China alone, Taiwanese-invested Foxconn's drive to dominate global electronics manufacturing has aligned perfectly with China's goal of becoming the world leader in technology. This book reveals the human cost of that ambition and what our demands for the newest and best technology mean for workers. Foxconn workers have repeatedly demonstrated their power to strike at key nodes of transnational production, challenge management and the Chinese state, and confront global tech behemoths. Dying for an iPhone allows us to assess the impact of global capitalism's deepening crisis on workers.

In recent decades, much of youth research in Chinese societies has sought to understand the transformation of the younger generation and their social environment in the context of globalization, deindustrialization and economic insecurity. The epochal events of the global economic transformation and financial crisis, along with long-term Chinese social trends such as rising unemployment, income disparity, and migration, are in the process of creating new structural relations between young people and related social actors. Accordingly, this book charts the current conditions of youth services and policies in Chinese societies by examining case studies in Beijing, Jinan, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Hong Kong. The chapters address the related issues stemming from unemployment, volunteering, internal migration, economic disadvantages, school social work, and leadership training. Through comparative analyses of the aforementioned issues, the collection highlights contemporary issues in Chinese youth policies and services, including work commitment, social inclusion, social support from family and teachers, volunteering, and leadership training. The book argues that the strengthening of empowerment and social inclusion in Chinese youth services offers a solution to problems of alienation, powerlessness, and underclass status. The quest for social inclusion therefore merits renewed attention in the youth policies and services of Chinese societies. This was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Adolescence and Youth.

In China, capitalist development since the 1980s has given rise to an enormous new industrial working class. In the vast export-processing zones along China's southeastern coast, countless so-called 'migrant workers' or 'peasant workers' from interior provinces eke out a living in innumerable factories. Through thirty-five years of struggle, they have gradually established a foothold as part of China's new industrial working class.

As China has evolved into an industrial powerhouse over the past two decades, a new class of workers has developed: the dagongmei, or working girls. The dagongmei are women in their late teens and early twenties who move from rural areas to urban centers to work in factories. Because of state laws dictating that those born in the countryside cannot permanently leave their villages, and familial pressure for young women to marry by their late twenties, the dagongmei are transient labor. They undertake physically exhausting work in urban factories for an average of four or five years before returning home. The young women are not coerced to work in the factories; they know about the twelve-hour shifts and the hardships of industrial labor. Yet they are still eager to leave home. Made in China is a compelling look at the lives of these women, workers caught between the competing demands of global capitalism, the socialist state, and the patriarchal family.Pun Ngai conducted ethnographic work at an electronics factory in southern China's Guangdong province, in the Shenzhen special economic zone where foreign-owned factories are proliferating. For eight months she slept in the employee dormitories and worked on the shop floor alongside the women whose lives she chronicles. Pun illuminates the workers' perspectives and experiences, describing the lure of consumer desire and especially the minutiae of factory life. She looks at acts of resistance and transgression in the workplace, positing that the chronic pains-such as backaches and headaches-that many of the women experience are as indicative of resistance to oppressive working conditions as they are of defeat. Pun suggests that a silent social revolution is underway in China and that these young migrant workers are its agents.

In 2009 Slavoj Zizek brought together an acclaimed group of intellectuals to discuss the continued relevance of communism. Unexpectedly the conference attracted an audience of over 1,000 people. The discussion has continued across the world and this book gathers responses from the conference in Seoul. It includes the interventions of regular contributors Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek, as well as work from across Asia, notably from Chinese scholar Wang Hui, offering regional perspectives on communism in an era of global economic crisis and political upheaval.

As China has emerged as an industrial powerhouse over the past two decades, a new class of workers has developed: the dagongmei, or working girls. The dagongmei are women in their late teens and early twenties who move from rural areas to urban centers to work in factories. Due to state laws dictating that those born in the countryside cannot permanently leave their villages and familial pressure for young women to marry by their late twenties, the dagongmei are transient labor. They undertake physically exhausting work in urban factories for an average of four or five years before returning home. The young women are not coerced to work in the factories; they know about the twelve-hour shifts and the hardships of industrial labor. Yet they are still eager to leave home. In Made in China, Pun Ngai offers a compelling look at the lives of these women, workers caught between the competing demands of global capitalism, the socialist state, and the patriarchal family. Ngai conducted ethnographic work at an electronics factory in southern China's Guangdong province, in the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, where foreign-owned factories are proliferating. For eight months she slept in the employee dormitories and worked on the shop floor alongside the women whose lives she chronicles. Ngai illuminates the workers' perspectives and experiences, describing the lure of consumer desire and, especially, the minutiae of factory life. She looks at acts of resistance and transgression in the workplace, positing that the chronic pains--such as backaches and headaches--that many of the women experience are as indicative of resistance to oppressive working conditions as they are of defeat. Ngai suggests that a silent social revolution is underway in China and that these young migrant workers are its protagonists.