Hsiao-Hung Pai
While the ConDems and New Labour fall over themselves to outdo Ukips attack on immigrant workers, Hsiao-Hung Pai goes under cover to work as a housekeeper in a number of brothels and exposes the reality of the lives of the people the Tories want to scapegoat.
Hsiao-Hung Pai
When we interviewed her for last month's Socialist Review, Hsiao-Hung Pai asked why would anyone be interested in a travelogue, but she should not be so modest, since describing this excellent book as a travelogue is a bit like calling the M62 the Oldham bypass.
China's booming economy has been built on the back of migrant workers. Hsiao-Hung Pai talked to Sally Kincaid and Charlie Hore about her new book and the lives of China's migrant population
Why did you choose the title Scattered Sand for your book?
The idea of Scattered Sand came originally from Sun Yatsen, the founding father of the Guomindang (Nationalist) Party - so it came from the Republican Revolution of 1911. The idea was when he was talking about the Chinese people as being scattered sands - not united as a nation against Western imperialism.
Breakneck industrial expansion has transformed women's lives in China over the last generation. They live very different lives to their mothers and grandmothers but face enormous hardship in China's huge factories
If you are reading this article online the chances are that some part of the technology you are using will have been produced at one of the Foxconn factories in China.
This company made the international news last year due to a number of suicides among its workers. One of the largest Foxconn factories is in the city of Shenzhen in South East China. Between 300,000 and 450,000 workers are employed in this massive industrial park - a walled campus within Shenzhen dubbed "Foxconn city".
I have been a socialist and active trade unionist all my adult life. As a local National Union of Teachers (NUT) officer it sometimes feels like we can be bogged down with case work, having to deal with bullying managers and teachers broken by the pressures of the job. However the last few weeks have been the most exciting of my working life.
The TUC demo on 26 March started to mobilise people for what everyone knew would be the battle ahead. Better organised schools had delegations on the demo and returned back to school more confident that they were part of a much bigger movement.
But the real momentum started after NUT conference over Easter, spurred on by the fact that another teaching union, the ATL, had voted unanimously to ballot for strike action. This is a union that has never taken strike action in its 127-year history. The feeling was, if they are prepared to strike then things have really shifted.
It was good to read Alex Kenny's column on the NUT teachers' union ballot and pay campaign (Union-made, Socialist Review, February 2008).
In Wakefield and District Division we wanted to use this as an opportunity to get into schools across the district. The fact that NUT general secretary Steve Sinnott has written to all members saying they should have school union meetings makes this much easier to arrange.
Review of 'Ecological Debt', Andrew Simms, Pluto £12.99
The publication of this book is extremely timely, coming as it does as the effects of climate change are having devastating consequences in the Southern states of the US. At the same time scientists are organising to put pressure on their governments to take prompt action to combat the effects of climate change.
