Resistance through Accommodation: A Citizenship Approach to Migrant Worker NGOs in China.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork among migrant worker NGOs conducted between 2011 and 2015, this article employs critical theories of citizenship to illustrate how migrant worker NGOs use a strategy of ‘resistance through accommodation’ to re-shape the citizenship regime and discourse in China. The dominant literature on labour activism tends to discount the potential for migrant worker NGOs to undertake resistance, on account of their dependency upon the state and the market. The article contends that while NGOs must engage in relations with the state to ensure their own survival, their activism does not ultimately centre on either resisting or accommodating to the state directly, but rather upon a broader engagement process aimed at the strategic purpose of ‘citizenship transformation’.