Ethnic minority empowerment and marginalization: Yi labour migrants outside China’s Autonomous Regions

While there is an emerging body of literature that examines labour resistance within industrial cities in China, there is, however, little research on ethnic minority labour migrants, in particular their interaction with the local state in migrant-receiving cities. This study fills this research gap by focusing on ethnic Yi labour migrants in the Pearl River Delta area. Based on seven and a half months of fieldwork, this article illustrates the ways in which local governments cope with Yi labour disputes on the one hand, and the strategies that Yi migrants developed – emphasizing their minority status while negotiating their labour rights – on the other. The article finds that a strategy to maintain stability by applying patronage selectively to certain ethnic groups cultivates ethnic elites as middlemen to appease workers’ collective disputes in the short term. However, the state’s failure to fully recognize cultural differences of ethnic minorities and to protect their labour rights results in more resistance and marginalization of ethnic minority labourers in the long term. In this way, the Chinese government’s current policy may jeopardize the wider aim of maintaining social order