The Precarious Refusal: The “Sanhe Gods” and The Search for Meaning among China’s Marginalized Youth скачать в хорошем качестве

The Precarious Refusal: The “Sanhe Gods” and The Search for Meaning among China’s Marginalized Youth

LSE Fudan Hub seminar, 22 January 2026 Presenter: Dr Zhuang Han (LSE) Chair: Dr Tim Hildebrandt (Department of Social Policy, LSE) Abstract: Zhuang Han’s current project investigates how structural economic change and cultural transformation shape the lives and aspirations of marginalized youth in post-reform China. Focusing on the Sanhe Gods – young migrant workers in Shenzhen who reject long-term factory employment in favor of daily-paid, precarious work – it analyzes how slowing economic growth, demographic transition, and an evolving labor regime have reshaped the moral meanings of work, success, and mobility. Based on ten months of ethnographic fieldwork, the study situates the Sanhe subculture within China’s exit from its demographic dividend. As stable manufacturing jobs contract and mobility prospects recede, many youth confront a widening mismatch between educational attainment, labor demand, and life chances. The Sanhe Gods respond through withdrawal rather than protest, constructing low-cost lifestyles that reject the long-standing ethic of “eating bitterness” (吃苦). Linking micro-level survival strategies to macro-level shifts in China’s development trajectory, the dissertation proposes a framework of Human Capital Transition to explain the growing disjuncture between rising education and shrinking opportunity. It argues that the Sanhe Gods exemplify a broader youth critique of meritocratic ideals under conditions of structural stagnation, prompting a reconsideration of labor, value, and dignity in the post-industrial era. Presenter Bio: Zhuang Han is a Research Fellow at the LSE–Fudan Global Public Policy Hub in the Department of Social Policy. He earned his Ph.D. in Global Development from Cornell University, where his research and teaching bridged the study of social inequality, social change, public policy, and emerging digital economies.