The Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion: Pensions, Labor Informalization, and Labor Mobility in China

Why and when do some authoritarian states develop welfare regimes that include workers in flexible and precarious employment positions, despite their limited economic or political leverage to challenge welfare exclusion?

In The Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion, Yujeong Yang investigates this question by examining locally divergent patterns of pension expansion in China. Drawing on interviews, surveys, and anecdotal evidence, Yang argues that the answer lies in local citizenship institutions and the ability of local governments to deny informal workers’ access to citizenship membership. As Yang stresses, China is one of the most rapidly aging societies in the world, and the changes in the demographic structure make the broader and equitable pension provision one of the most urgent political issues in the country. However, the growing employment insecurity poses a serious challenge to the state’s ambition to provide adequate pension benefits to a broader segment of the population. As Yang shows, local states can exclude informal workers from welfare systems only when they can effectively retract or block informal workers’ access to social citizenship membership. Conversely, when local states are unable to deny such membership to informal workers, they are compelled to incorporate informal workers into public pension systems, albeit often with minimal benefits.

Extending these insights beyond China, The Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion offers a valuable framework for understanding the shifting dynamics of welfare politics in the context of growing labor informalization, the rise of the gig economy, and global migration.

Yujeong Yang is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and a Faculty Affiliate at the Center for East Asian & Pacific Studies. She earned her PhD in Political Science from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Dr. Yang’s research focuses on welfare and labor politics in China, as well as the political and social implications of China’s global economic expansion. She teaches courses on Chinese politics, East Asian politics, authoritarian regimes, and globalization.