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Who builds Shanghai's fiber-optic network? Thinking urban infrastructure through migrant construction labor

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  • Leif Johnson

Abstract

While a growing body of literature understands infrastructure through the social relations and labor that make it possible, the work of construction in infrastructure projects remains under-theorized. Drawing on participatory research with migrant construction workers in Shanghai, China, I consider the outcomes of a reliance on informal, migrant labor in Shanghai's multi-year “Overhead-Underground†infrastructure renovation project, which moves overhead fiber-optics cabling underground. Like other Chinese infrastructure projects, this reconstruction of Shanghai's fiber-optic network relies on large quantities of on-the-ground construction labor, drawn from a low-wage, precarious, and largely informal migrant workforce that is not expected not be incorporated into the city. Through engagement with scholarship that has viewed people and social relationships as infrastructure, I demonstrate the processes by which informal migrant construction labor facilitates both physical construction and the accumulation of infrastructural knowledge, both of which are necessary to the completion of infrastructural upgrading projects.

Suggested Citation

  • Leif Johnson, 2023. "Who builds Shanghai's fiber-optic network? Thinking urban infrastructure through migrant construction labor," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 55(4), pages 795-809, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:55:y:2023:i:4:p:795-809
    DOI: 10.1177/0308518X221140886
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Yanpeng Jiang & Paul Waley, 2020. "Who Builds Cities in China? How Urban Investment and Development Companies Have Transformed Shanghai," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(4), pages 636-651, July.
    2. Julia Gabriele Harten, 2021. "Housing Single Women," Journal of the American Planning Association, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 87(1), pages 85-100, January.
    3. Michelle Buckley, 2019. "Between House and Home: Renovations Labor and the Production of Residential Value," Economic Geography, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 95(3), pages 209-230, May.
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