1. Compare the people who came to the new world from Europe to seek a living to the Factory girls who left their homes to work in the factories. What motivated each group to leave their homes? Discuss the similarities and differences in their experiences. The Chinese factory migrant workers represent three times the number of Europeans who left their homes to come to the New World. Both shared the common struggle of finding adequate housing, dealing with overcrowding, and the mixture of luck, and ability to find a job. Similarly, the Chinese migrant workers and European emigrants dealt with learning a new language and adapting to different cultural values.
2. Compare the people who came from China to work on the railroad during the 1800’s to the factory workers in China today. How are their situations the same? How are they different? Use concrete examples.
The situation is the same because in the 1800s investors saw investment in building the railroads, and there were the same prophecies of breathless growth. Connections were made to connect the interior to the coastal cities, a series of rail links that still exist today, and factory workers use. Also, the amount of migration was equally huge. Twenty five million people over the course of fifty years helped to build China’s railroad, the largest wave until the present day factory work migration.
3. Explain Socialization and resocialization. How might the theories be applied to the people in China who migrate to work in the factories. Please use three examples from the book to support your ideas. Socialization is the way people learn the practices that make them part of society. For example, learning to read eat with a utensil. Resocialization is learning new practice that differ from the original ones you learned. So for example, in the village the families always have the television set on in the living room because the house is communal and the social practice is to be public. So when the factory girl leaves the house to make a cell phone call and to walk and think, this goes against the cultural practice. In the city, she learned to adapted to loneliness and to appreciate privacy, but in the village she was socialized to be always public where there are no secrets.
4. Write a short description of planned happenstance. Do the women in Factory Girls engage in planned happenstance? Why or why not? Use three concrete examples from the book to support your ideas. Yes, the girls engage in planned happenstance. Planned happenstance is proactively taking advantage of unplanned events in a planned way so as to advance your status in the social hierarchy. For example, Wu loses her ID card, which is crucial for getting work, but she uses the ID of a card she finds to establish a new identity so she can get a job at a factory. Chunming cannot help change the fact that she works twelve hours, and must figure out how to plan the remaining time. She eats, sleeps, studies Cantonese, and uses money to invest in a watch instead of buying clothes. Lu Qingmin gets a job making electronic calendars but she hates the living conditions, but she sticks out for six months, planning to quit so she can find a better factory an hour away by bus.
5. What are the basic assumptions of Trait Factor Theory? How does it influence the testing movement? How does it influence the job description movement? Trait factor theory is what it sounds like. People take a standardized test determine personality traits that will make them a good fit for a job. It influences the testing movement because it is part of this idea in psychology to find empirical ways to map observable behavior onto patterns of living in society well. It affects the job description movement because it implies that doing a job well means having ability but it also implies that personality is also a key factor in career success.
6. Write a short description of Donald Super’s theory of Career maturity. Do you think that the theory can be applied to the factory workers in China? Why? Use at least two examples from the book to support your view. Donald Super’s theory of career maturity is Donald Super’s theory of career maturity is based on the psychology of human development. Growth, exploration, establishment, maintenance and disengagement are the five stages that people go through in their careers. For example, there is the exploration stage. For example most migrants like Lu Qingmin and others were simply bored at home, and they went out to explore. The migrant story is based on this idea of going out and exploring outside the home village. Chungming exemplifies maintenance because she seeks out education to help advance her career. She kept a diary of her experiences to chart her growth, and she actively sought jobs to leverage the work she was doing with language and her people skills.
7. Briefly describe Donald Super’s theory of Self-concept. How does Self-concept contribute to career maturity? What happens to people who do not have an accurate Self- concept? Donald Super argues that just as adolescents go through the process of forming an identity separate from their parents and their family, so too does entering a new career affect how one sees oneself. Self-Concept is how one sees oneself in society and it affects career maturity because in order to survive a new job one has to basically reinvent themselves into a new role in order to be successful. People who do not have an accurate self-concept often find herself in role confusion. They do not make clear choices and they are ambiguous about their role in relation to their families and to their work.
8. What is work adjustment? How do we know if a person has achieved good work adjustment? Do you think that the people who work in the Chinese Factories have good work adjustment? Why? Support your claims with at least two examples from the book? Work adjustment is basically learning new job skills in order to maintain a job and not become obsolete. We know a person has achieved good work adjustment when they can identify what skills they need to learn in order to become successful in the job or to be promoted. For example, learning new skills is often what motivates migrant workers in China’s factory towns to seek employment in the first place. Chunming makes a list of skills she needs to become a boss. Some of the workers, like Chunming were good at work adjustment, but other girls like Min, who left the factory to return to the village, were not able to make the adjustment and to learn new skills to survive. Using the machines is dangerous and fingers are cut off by the machine, so in these cases work adjustment is like rehabilitation. The workers who loses physical ability have to figure out what to do in order to maintain their jobs.
9. According to Donald Super there are four stages of adult career development. Briefly describe each stage. Why is it possible to occupy more than one stage at a time? What stage or stages are you occupying right now? In the exploration stage you are still trying different jobs to see which one fits you. In the establishment stage you are getting your initial skill set underway. In the maintenance stage you are learning specific skills to build on one career. In the final stage you are distancing yourself from work, and your output decreases. It is possible to occupy more than one stage because you can be in the establishment stage, but have a job that requires you to not only learn entry level skills, but also acquire skills that help you to get promoted. We think of exploration as only for adolescents, but it is possible to be at the maintenance stage and also explore. For example, a friend of mine works in a sales, but they are exploring small business skills.
10. What is globalization of jobs? How does globalization benefit employers? What problems does it cause for employees, countries that corporations leave, and for host countries? Basically the globalization of jobs is the idea that companies can shift labor and production to different parts of the world so it is not all concentrated and constricted by geography. It benefits employers because they can find cheaper place to produce parts that would be more expensive to build in their home countries. It causes problems for employees because they are typically paid a lower wage, and qualified people who could have done the job in the home country usually demand more salary to do the same job. The jobs shift from qualified higher paid workers, to less qualified under paid workers. It affects host countries because the economy is being influenced by outside factors and the market can dramatically shift based on the demand of consumers.
11. What are some of the economic implications of economic development in China? Do you think it is hurting the people of China or helping them? Why? How is it hurting the environment? What impact is it having on the workers and environment of the United States? Why do the leaders of China think that it is unfair of us to ask it to clean up its environment? The economic development in China is causing a larger gap between the poor and the rich. Houses are being torn down and being rebuilt at higher cost. Homes are being demolished to make way for new subway development, for example, and construction is booming, but people are being displaced. The way of life is changing. It is helpful in that new infrastructure is being built. But construction is being done so quickly and so haphazardly that there is no concern for the environment. The clear ponds of the village are being wiped out by mountain dew colored ponds surrounded by impersonal apartment buildings. The number of people moving to the city is putting stress on the transportation infrastructure. Consumers are demanding new products and countries like China have to meet demand by increasing production. But workers are growing unsettled, where they know they are not being treated as well by bosses from other countries.
12. With globalization comes greater awareness of problems like child labor. What are the pros and cons of child labor? What happened in 1995 when the U.S. Congress tried to pass the Child Labor Deterrence Bill? Globalization raises awareness of where the products you buy in the department store come from. The story is complicated and different parts are assembled in different places. It is very likely that your garment or laptop was assembled by a child younger than 18 years of age. Most of the factory girls we read about left their village when they were fifteen or sixteen to find work. They left their families behind and had to grow up very fast. The pros of child labor in the developing world is that young workers can send money back home to their struggling families. On pay day in Dongguan, the wire transfer services are overrun by people trying to send money home. It is a complicated problem because with the Child Labor Deterrence Bill, which forbade companies from selling products made by children, it also meant that children lost their jobs in developing countries. Just by outlawing child labor does not solve the problem. By banning it the children are left without income and could starve, so the answer is to find ways to give protection to children who work, to keep them from unhealthy living conditions, and to give them a living wage and hours of work commensurate with their age and ability.
References
Chang, Leslie T. Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China. New York: Spiegel &
Grau, 2008. Print.
