State Interference, Organizational Fields, and Migrant-Worker Labor Contracts

Labor contracts are a central institution in the normal operation of the market economy, and are one of the fields undergoing major changes in China's transitioning economy. Labor contract studies are heavily focused on the major practical problem of protecting the rights and interests of migrant workers. This article relies upon a field survey of enterprises in the Pearl River Delta to make an empirical analysis of migrant-worker labor contracts from the standpoint of interactions between state interference and organizational fields and study the move from asymmetric employment contracts to the three new types of employment contracts (the patriarchal welfare system, quota contracts, and standard contracts) that is occurring in the current migrant-labor market. On this basis, the author holds that a standard and obligatory binding mechanism for labor contracts must be formed to build a new order of stable and harmonious labor-capital relations