Relational Work in Global Markets

The moral work of everyday resistance: Negotiate labor strategies in the transnational trade (In Progress)

This paper engages with debates on market and morality to deepen the theorization of agency in informal work. Existing studies show that informal workers assert moral agency by drawing on moral norms to evaluate labor relations and by humanizing market interactions to smoothen labor practices. Tracing the labor strategies of Hui translators employed in small-sized trade companies that help foreign buyers export goods from China, I show a less-theorized aspect of workers' moral agency, reflected by their negotiation over the ethicality of everyday resistance to perceived exploitation and inequality. Translators in trade companies can often enhance their income by taking kickbacks from suppliers or poaching clients from employers to establish independent entrepreneurship. I show how Hui translators negotiate these morally fraught strategies of resistance, to balance their economic pursuit with relational concerns and religious beliefs. This analysis highlights the moral labor of structurally marginalized actors as they pursue economic mobility and contend with power asymmetries in the labor process.

Brokers in risky markets: the relational work of translators in China-Middle East trade economy (In progress)

This paper investigates the symbolic and emotional work underlying Hui translators' effort to broker transnational trade. Extending cultural economic sociologists' effort to theorize how brokers deploy cultural norms and manage emotions to motivate others to enter economic transactions, this paper shows how Hui translators use these mechanisms to sustain and mediate relationships in risky markets. These findings deepen understanding about the relational mechanisms of brokerage in the South-South economy and their role in shaping the social structure, as well as the moral and emotional dynamics of the global market.