ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the lingering effects of the state and connections with it in several different trades. The chapter illustrates the diversity of the working lives and lifestyles experienced by China’s urban transients. The demise of socialism, plus the presence of hordes of low-wage, low-skill job-seekers has had three outcomes, all of which have a bearing on the employment channels and working conditions among today’s “floaters.” The balance between the tracts within each trade varies with the amount of competition, the degree to which the trade in question is tied to the state, and the extent to which the business in which its practitioners engage is wholly anomic. Construction work absorbs a large if variable proportion of the employed portion of any given city’s floating population. Laborers in this line of business can be found linked under contract to state firms, operating in teams of fellow villagers, and completely on their own, as individuals.
