Old and new inequalities: Citizenly discounting and precarious work in a changing China

This chapter explains how the rural-urban migration and citizenship is of central importance to grappling with China’s ever-shifting contours of precarious work and social inequalities. To obtain a better understanding of this key characteristic, a brief navigation of historical trajectories is conducted, which sets out to bring anthropological perspectives to bear on the elusive cultural domain and its interconnections with institutional forces. Specifically, the chapter illustrates the complex ways in which traditional Confucian beliefs and values are embedded and/or appropriated in three phases of major political and economic transformations: (1) the pre-reform era (1949–1978), (2) the reform era (1979–2007), and (3) the regulation era (2008–present). The findings shed light on the symbolic power of culture and its implications for social change.