Cartographic Imaginaries of Fast Fashion in Guangzhou, China

Abstract

This chapter analyzes how Chinese rural migrants’ participation in the global commodity chains for fast fashion in Guangzhou intersects with their geographic imaginaries of the “global.” Specifically, it examines how migrants come to know the extent of their displacement as low-wage laborers in one of China’s “workshops of the world.” Through ethnographic description, this chapterreveals how migrant laborers’ geographic imaginaries inform the ways in which Chinese migrant laborers come to understand the conditions of their class-based labor and displacement vis-à-vis other market participants along the wider commodity chain. Migrant laborers create mental maps of the commodity chains in which they participate, while they situate their class-based roles along the transnational production chains.