Among the most dramatic changes to affect China in the 1990s is the upsurge in labour mobility and the emergence of a market-driven system of labour allocation, changes which profoundly affect the working environment and livelihoods of the Chinese people. Papers in this collection draw on a wide variety of data sources to analyse key elements of this transformation.

Street level discretion -- Three pathologies: the indifferent, the enforcer, and the caregiver -- A gymnastics of the self: coping with the everyday pressures of street-level work -- When the rules run out: informal taxonomies and peer-level accountability -- Impossible situations: on the breakdown of moral integrity at the frontlines of public service

Featuring a wide geographical scope, this collection of essays surveys enterprise and welfare reforms in all the remaining four Asian communist states: China, Vietnam, Laos and North Korea. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union they can no longer place major reliance upon assistance from other 'fraternal' states and have to devise their own strategies for survival. All have shown a trend towards greater reliance on market forces, though in different ways and to varying degrees. Enterprise management has to adapt to this. In some of them entrepreneurs have become politically and socially acceptable. They may even begin to set trends for social evolution. Yet since state entreprises used to be responsible for all welfare payments to employees and their families, management reforms cannot be separated from those of welfare arrangements. Reducing an enterprise's non-commerical obligations for the sake of greater market efficiency is bound to affect welfare provision. It also reopens the role of official trade unions. How these regimes cope with these conflicting pressures are vital factors in their long-term viability.

The recent unprecedented scale of Chinese migration has had far-reaching consequences. Within China, many villages have been drained of their young and most able workers, cities have been swamped by the ‘floating population’, and many rural migrants have been unable to integrate into urban society. Internationally, the Chinese have become increasingly more mobile. This Handbook provides a unique collection of new and original research on internal and international Chinese migration and its effects on the sense of belonging of migrants.