JACK QIU Chinese University of Hong Kong

Migrant Technologies:

(re)producing (un)freedoms

Friday, 20th May, 2016

10:00am – 4:30pm

United Nations University Institute on Computing and Society

Join us for a free, one-day event where we bring together scholars, practitioners and

activists to panel discussions to share our understandings and research on information

and communication technology (ICT) use by migrants from Asia.

Register now on Eventbrite by 15th May 2016 to secure your place for the event

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/migrant-technologies-reproducing-unfreedoms-

tickets-24922537982.

Location: Casa Silva Mendes, Estrada do

Engenheiro Trigo No 4, Macau SAR, China

(Opposite to the main entrance of Hotel Guia)

Hosted by:

MIGRANT TECHNOLOGIES: (RE)PRODUCING (UN)FREEDOMS

Emerging themes in Migrant Technology research Morning panel

Freedom, Slavery, and Working-Class ICTs:

Learning from Chinese Migrant Workers in Foxconn

Freedom, Slavery, & Working-Class ICTS: Learning from Migrant Workers

in Foxconn

Jack Linchuan Qiu

Snapshots from (2016-forthcoming, U

of Illinois Press)

Migrants & Working-Class ICTs:

Emancipating or Enslaving?

ISLAVE: TWO SUBTYPES

Manufacturing – rural-to-urban migrants, institutionally disempowered, low pay, poor work conditions, making gadgets

Manufactured – consumers influenced by marketing, culturally absorbed, “immaterial labor”, making UGC

Commonalities – long work time, body discipline, atomized social life

MANUFACTURING iSLAVE

alissaorlando1

maomaobear

Foxconn Suicide Express, 2010

Foxconn & Apple Blamed

FINANCIAL TIMES

Foxconn Facilities in China, 2011

Living Conditions Since Feitorias

Lower Deck in Middle Passage

Student “Interns”

Anti-Jumping Nets

Disposal of Workers

Testimony from Tian Yu

Weibo

A Typology of WGC (Worker-Generated Content)

CONCLUSION: FREEDOM BEYOND FOXCONN

Freedom is better defined in the negative – i.e., in de facto status of not being a slave

Pernicious parallels between 21c sweatshops & 17c slavery – both based on unfree migrant workers

Attention to the production not just consumption of ICTs

Labor resistance as basis for true emancipation

Thank You

Define slavery?

• Slavery: an essential feature of historical capitalism, even today;

• Slavery mutates over time – from inmates & gang labor to familia

caesaries

• The goal is to exploit unfairly the labor &/or body of the enslaved;

• Sociologically it works through “natal alienation”;

Understanding slavery

• Resistance & abolition are fundamental to slavery & to our understanding of it;

• Slave systems wax & wane, resulting from & accelerating geopolitical change;

• Hegemonic consumption culture, relying on communication and media, is a pillar of slave-powered economies;

Understanding slavery

• Slavery as de facto condition rather than de jure status;

• “the powers attaching to the right of ownership”:

– e.g., possession, transfer, profit, disposal;

– slavery & “institutions & practices similar to slavery” exist if any of these powers is found to have been exercised.