Labour research under coercive authoritarianism: Comparative reflections on fieldwork challenges in China

Daniel Fuchs, Patricia Fuk-Ying Tse and Xiaojun Feng
Additional contact information
Daniel Fuchs: SOAS University of London, UK
Patricia Fuk-Ying Tse: University of Warwick, UK
Xiaojun Feng: University of Oxford, UK

Economic and Industrial Democracy, 2019, vol. 40, issue 1, 132-155

Abstract: This article examines conditions for the conduct of qualitative research on labour and industrial relations in China since the shift to a coercive form of authoritarian governance in 2012. In comparing the experiences of three doctoral students from Europe, Hong Kong and mainland China respectively who conducted fieldwork in China between 2015 and 2017, the article argues that coercive authoritarianism has significantly increased the challenges of fieldwork, resulting in a need for inventive coping strategies. The study highlights a need to establish informal networks and reciprocal trust relationships, and points to the elevated importance of ethical considerations in fieldwork on labour and industrial relations in China.

Keywords: China; coercive authoritarianism; fieldwork; labour studies; methodology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0143831X18780337 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:ecoind:v:40:y:2019:i:1:p:132-155

DOI: 10.1177/0143831X18780337

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economic and Industrial Democracy from Department of Economic History, Uppsala University, Sweden
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().