In #iSlaveat10, Jenny Chan reviews ten years of struggles at Foxconn, the Taiwanese-owned contractor of Apple. In the recent publication ‘Made in China’ Chan focuses on two issues: freedom of association and the situation of student interns.
In January 2017, Apple celebrated the tenth anniversary of the launch of the first model of the iPhone. After a decade, has Apple’s extraordinary profitability been coupled with any greater social responsibility? Are the Chinese workers who produce the most lucrative product in the electronics world seeing improved working and living conditions? This essay provides some answers by focussing on two issues: freedom of association and the situation of student interns.
Jenny Chan is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Hong Kong Polytechnic University and an Advisor of SACOM. She is co-author of Dying for an iPhone (with Mark Selden and Ngai Pun, forthcoming) and La machine est ton seigneur et ton maître [The Machine is Your Lord and Your Master] (with Yang and Xu Lizhi, 2015).
Download the publication with the contribution of Jenny Chan Made in China: A Quarterly on Chinese Labour, Civil Society, and Rights (Volume 2, Issue 3, Chinese Labour in a Global Perspective, July-September, pp. 20-23. ISSN 2206-9119).
Made in China is an open access quarterly on Chinese labour, civil society, and rights.
