Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-wzw2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-01T14:12:38.341Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Constantly on the move Chinese engineers’ job-hopping strategies in information technology work

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

Tongyu Wu Open the ORCID record for Tongyu Wu [Opens in a new window]
Tongyu Wu*
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
*
Tongyu Wu, Department of Sociology, Zhejiang University, Zijingang Campus, No. 866 Yuhangtang Road, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310058, China. Email: wutongyu@zju.edu.cn
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines Chinese immigrant engineers’ navigation in the highly flexible information technology (IT) industry in the United States and their strategies of utilizing the high-velocity labour market to their advantage. Flexible employment has grown both in prevalence and prominence in the study of the American IT industry. What flexibility theorists fail to attend to, however, is the ethnicised demission of the high-velocity labour market in the IT sector. To address this vacancy, the researcher conducted a 13-month ethnography at a leading internet-services firm in the United States and 66 additional interviews with engineers from eight leading tech companies. The ethnographic work showed that inequality that emerged within the tech firms (e.g. ‘bamboo ceilings’) disadvantaged Chinese engineers’ career development. The ‘bamboo ceiling’ stimulated Chinese immigrants to use the high-velocity labour market to normalize their job-hopping practices, in order to circumvent their career disadvantage. To facilitate their job-hopping, Chinese engineers developed university-based networks. This study concludes that, with help of their university network, Chinese immigrants became the most mobile group in the US tech industry, which further preserved the industry’s flexibility.

Keywords

D23L16EngineersinequalityAsian immigrantsflexibilitycohort circlehigh-tech
Type
New aspects of digital labour
Information
The Economic and Labour Relations Review , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , September 2021 , pp. 360 - 381
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alarcón, R (1999) Recruitment processes among foreign-born engineers and scientists in Silicon Valley. American Behavioral Scientist 42(9): 1381–1397.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barley, SR, Kunda, G (2004) Gurus, Hired Guns, and Warm Bodies: Itinerant Experts in a Knowledge Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Breen, R, Jonsson, JO (2005) Inequality of opportunity in comparative perspective: Recent research on educational attainment and social mobility. Annual Review of Sociology 31(1): 223–243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cappelli, PH, Keller, J (2013) A study of the extent and potential causes of alternative employment arrangements. ILR Review 66(4): 874–901.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Di Maria, C, Lazarova, EA (2012) Migration, human capital formation, and growth: an Empirical investigation. World Development 40(5): 938–955.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DiTomaso, N, Smith, SA (1996) Race and ethnic minorities and white women in management. In: Tang, J, Smith, E (eds), Women and Minorities in American Professions. Albany, NY: State University of New York, 87–109.Google Scholar
Fernandez, RM, Fernandez-Mateo, I (2006) Networks, race, and hiring. American Sociological Review 71(1): 42–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gee, B, Peck, D, Wong, J (2015) Hidden in Plain Sight: Asian American Leaders in Silicon Valley. New York, NY: Ascend.Google Scholar
Gershon, I (2017) The quitting economy. Aeon, 26 July. Available at: https://aeon.co/essays/how-work-changed-to-make-us-all-passionate-quitters.Google Scholar
Granovetter, M (1995) Getting a Job: A Study of Contacts and Careers. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hagan, JM (1998) Social networks, gender, and immigrant incorporation: Resources and constraints. American Sociological Review 63(1): 55–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hyde, A (1997) Employee identity caucuses in silicon valley: can they transcend the boundaries of the firm? Labor Law Journal 8: 491–497.Google Scholar
Hyde, A (2003) Working in Silicon Valley: Economic and Legal Analysis of a High Velocity Labor Market. New York, NY: M.E. Sharpe, Inc.Google Scholar
Jones, J (2016) Michio Kaku on Why Immigrants are America’s Secret Weapon. Open Culture, 3rd August. Available at: https://www.openculture.com/2016/08/michio-kaku-on-why-immigrants-are-americas-secret-weapon.html (accessed 5 August 2021).Google Scholar
Kim, T, Peck, D, Gee, B (2020) Race, Gender and the Double Glass Ceiling: An Analysis of EEOC National Workforce Data. New York, NY: The Ascend Foundation.Google Scholar
Lane, CM (2011) A Company of One: Insecurity, Independence, and the New World of White-Collar Unemployment. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Lee, J, Zhou, M (2015) The Asian American Achievement Paradox. Washington, DC: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Massey, D (1987) Return to Aztlan: The Social Process of Migration from Western Mexico. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Menjivar, C (1994) Salvadorian migration to the United States in the 1980s: what can we learn about it and from it? International Migration 32: 371–401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
National Foundation for American Policy (2017) The importance of international students to American science and engineering. Policy Brief, October. Available at: https://nfap.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/The-Importance-of-International-Students.NFAP-Policy-Brief.October-20171.pdf (accessed 4 August 2021).Google Scholar
Ong, A (1999) Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Ontiveros, ML (2017) H-1b visas, outsourcing and body shops: continuum of exploitation for high tech workers. Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law 38(1): 1–48.Google Scholar
Redden, E (2018) Closures of China-Foreign programs. Inside Higher Ed, 11 July. Available at: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/07/11/chinas-ministry-education-approves-termination-more-200-chinese-foreign-cooperative (accessed 4 August 2021).Google Scholar
Rivera, LA (2011) Ivies, extracurriculars, and exclusion: Elite employers’ use of educational credentials. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 29: 71–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Savinar, RL (2019) Job hopping & hunkering down: how H-1B migrant workers survive the US labour market. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2019.1610366.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saxenian, AL (2000) Silicon Valley’s new immigrant entrepreneurs. Santa Cruz, CA: MayUniversity of California. Working Paper 15, May.Google Scholar
Saxenian, AL (2001) Beyond boundaries: open labor markets and learning in Silicon Valley. In: Arthur, MB, Rousseau, DM (eds), The Boundaryless Career: A New Employment Principle for a New Organizational Era. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 23–39.Google Scholar
Saxenian, AL (2002) Local and Global Networks of Immigrant Professionals in Silicon Valley. San Francisco, CA: Public Policy Institute of California.Google Scholar
Scott, A, Kapor Klein, F, McAlear, F, et al. (2018) The Leaky Tech Pipeline:A Comprehensive Framework for Understanding and Addressing the lack of Diversity Across the Tech Ecosystem. Oakland, CA: Kapor Center for Social Impact.Google Scholar
Sharone, O (2013) Flawed System/Flawed Self: Job Searching and Unemployment Experiences. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shih, J (2006) Circumventing discrimination. Gender & Society 20(2): 177–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shih, J (2007) Social networks in the global high-tech industry. In: Brettel, CB (ed), Constructing Borders/Crossing Boundaries: Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, pp. 219–241.Google Scholar
Smith, V, Neuwirth, EB (2008) The Good Temp. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University/ILR Press.Google Scholar
Statista (2021). Number of College and University Students from China in the United States from Academic Year 2009/10 to 2019/20. New York, NY: Statista. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/372900/number-of-chinese-students-that-study-in-the-us/ (accessed 4 August 2021).Google Scholar
Tang, J (1993) Whites, Asians, and blacks in science and engineering: a reconsideration of their economic prospects. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 12: 249–291.Google Scholar
US Bureau of Statistics (2015) STEM crisis or STEM surplus? Yes and Yes. Monthly Labour Review, May. Available at: https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2015/article/stem-crisis-or-stem-surplus-yes-and-yes.htm (accessed 4 August 2021).Google Scholar
US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (US EEOC) (2014) Asian-Americans in the US Workforce. Washington DC: EEOC.Google Scholar
US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, United States (US EEOC) (2016) Diversity in High Tech. Washington DC: EEOC.Google Scholar
Wakabayashi, D, Schwartz, ND (2017) Not everyone in tech cheers visa program for foreign workers. New York Times, 5 February. Available at: https://nytimes.com (accessed 25 July 2021).Google Scholar
Xiang, B (2007) Global ‘Body Shopping’: An Indian Labor System in the Information Technology Industry. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar