Precarious Accumulation

Fast Fashion Bosses in Transnational Guangzhou

Nellie Chu (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

280 Seiten

2026
Duke University Press (Verlag)
978-1-4780-3309-7 (ISBN)

Artikel merken

In Precarious Accumulation, Nellie Chu tells the story of the migrant entrepreneurs at the heart of Guangzhou’s fast fashion industry - one of the world’s most dynamic hubs of transnational commodity production. Chu shows how rural Chinese migrants, West African traders, and South Korean jobbers navigate the high-speed, low-margin world of just-in-time garment production that fuels the constant accumulation of wealth via global supply chains. Drawing on fieldwork in Guangzhou’s urban villages and household workshops, Chu outlines how these entrepreneurs’ dreams of economic freedom clash with the reality of precarity and the exclusions of emigre status. Migrant bosses operate within a highly competitive, informal economy where they are both agents and target of exploitation, as they must evade rent collectors, endure racialized policing, and mitigate extortion from security officers and competitors. Chu crucially demonstrates how their efforts generate novel forms of migratory labor, commodity production, and cross-cultural exchange in postsocialist China.

Nellie Chu is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke Kunshan University.

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Migrant Bosshood and the Making of Global Fast Fashion 1
1. Made in China, Just in Time 32
2. Stalled Mobility 60
3. Surveillance and Regulation in the Shenfen (Identification) Economy 99
4. Speculative Real Estate and Flexible Appropriation 130
5. Transnational Migrant Bosshood 162
Conclusion. The Dilemmas of Migrant Bosshood and Supply Chain Capitalism in the Era of COVID-19 196
Notes 215
References 233
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	08.01.2026
Zusatzinfo	10 illustrations
Verlagsort	North Carolina
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	445 g
Themenwelt	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
Themenwelt	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	1-4780-3309-6 / 1478033096
ISBN-13	978-1-4780-3309-7 / 9781478033097
Zustand	Neuware