Workers’ understanding and experiences of labour practices in Chinese owned construction companies in Harare, Zimbabwe

Abstract

In post-2000, Zimbabwe has been engulfed by a political and economic crisis. In this context, there has been a rapid proliferation of Chinese investment that was accelerated by the country’s Look East policy to strengthen diplomatic relations between Zimbabwe and China after the country faced international sanctions and isolation from the United States of America and the European Union. The increasing Chinese investments in mining, retail, construction, and manufacturing have attracted growing scholarly attention, and several studies have been conducted. However, few studies have focused on the labour regimes and practices of Chinese construction companies in Zimbabwe. This study examines the labour practices of Chinese-owned construction companies in Zimbabwe. This qualitative study is interested in how these labour practices are experienced, perceived, and negotiated by local employees working in Chinese construction companies. The study triangulates several qualitative methods of data collection such as in-depth interviews, observations, life histories, and key informant interviews among other methods. Findings in this study show that Chinese labour regimes and practices in Harare are a consequence of a complex entanglement between local circumstances and Chinese workplace cultures. The study reveals that Chinese labour practices are imported from China by Chinese employers and Chinese workers recruited from China. However, with time, such labour practices gradually adapt to local contexts. However, the researcher argues that while Chinese labour practices are perceived as despotic, authoritarian, and sometimes exploitative/abusive, the local Zimbabwean employees should not be conceived as passive victims of such labour practices. Instead, local employees creatively devise various strategies that allow them to negotiate and navigate these labour practices. In addition, the study also argues that while some labour regimes such as the compound and dormitory practices are meant to control workers and compel them to work for long hours, such spaces have also become strong affective spaces where worker solidarities and consciousness are forged and cemented, which enable collective forms of mobilisation and resistance. The study therefore draws from Giddens (1984) structuration theory, which emphasises that in as much as the structure (which in this thesis is the Chinese labour regime) is coercive and controlling, workers adapt and utilise their everyday agency to respond to such labour regimes of power.