7 - Youth Job Searches in Urban China: The Use of Social Connections in a Changing Labor Market

Summary

GUANXI AND FINDING A JOB

Guanxi is often characterized as a notion rooted in the specificity and uniqueness of Chinese culture, and for this reason, studying how Chinese people use and think about their social relationships with others provides an interesting standpoint from which to observe and analyze social change. In this chapter, I will consider the use of guanxi in the job searches of urban youths and explore how perceptions and practices of guanxi might be shifting with broader social and economic changes. To this end, I will make some broad conjectures about how urban youths find work in China's cities in the late 1990s and consider some of the implications changing labor market conditions have for guanxi and youth job searches. I hope to demonstrate that with respect to guanxi and finding a job, individuals consider their options within a culturally and institutionally situated context. With change, people react and adjust accordingly. My findings suggest some interesting and fairly radical changes might be afoot regarding the ways young urbanites, at least, think about guanxi in relation to job searches. In contrast with Bian's findings (this volume) but similar to Guthrie's findings (this volume), the importance of guanxi in urban employment appears to be in decline.

Rather than seeking statistical or numerical generalizations, what I examine here is the place of guanxi in the way young urbanites conceptualize job searches.