Gong, Eleanor Yue; (2025) Constructing Meritocratic Selves, Language and Mobility: A Critical Sociolinguistic Ethnography of Highly Skilled Professionals in Chinese Global Workplaces. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This thesis investigates the ideological, linguistic, and spatial construction and management of "meritocratic selves" within Shanghai, a pivotal hub of global capitalism and meritocracy. It explores the integration of neoliberal, global, and nationalist agendas that shape self-enterprising worker-citizens in China's globalised economy. Drawing on a sociolinguistic ethnography in a Shanghai-based industrial park hosting multinational companies, the research examines the interplay between language policies, migration regimes (e.g., Shanghai's hukou policy), and labour regulation practices in global workplaces. A multi-dimensional and multi-sited perspective is adopted to study negotiations and tensions between the government, multinational companies, and highly skilled professionals. The idea of "meritocratic selves" with Chinese characteristics is conceptualised through a genealogical review and analysed adopting Foucault’s theories of governmentality and subjectivity. Three inter-related dimensions of meritocratic subjectivity are identified: desiring subjects, reflexive subjects, and bilingual plus subjects, each revealing the structures of feeling that underpin the promise of language skills for socioeconomic mobility and middle-class identity in China. These dimensions reflect a structural approach to economic development and social organisation, regarding meritocratic subjectivity as both a subject and object of governmentality. This study illustrates a city-workplace-employee mechanism that constructs multi-layered meritocratic institutions and actors. Within this mechanism, meritocratic selves function as a discourse, a skills-register, and a behavioural model to naturalise the neoliberal logic of language-mediated human capital and normalise institutional dispositions of skill-based meritocracy. It extends governance by aligning nationalist ambitions with enterprise profits and individual goals, thereby privatising the Chinese Dream of Rejuvenation into institutional interests of development and individual aspirations for geographical and social mobility. I also investigate language's role in justifying merit and indexing ideal workers, prompting perpetual self-investment in language acquisition. I contend that language shapes hierarchical workforce structures, cultivating meritocratic subjects within meritocratic workplaces as part of the broader endeavour to establishing Shanghai as a meritocratic city.

Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Qualification:	Ph.D
Title:	Constructing Meritocratic Selves, Language and Mobility: A Critical Sociolinguistic Ethnography of Highly Skilled Professionals in Chinese Global Workplaces
Language:	English
UCL classification:	UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Culture, Communication and Media
URI:	https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10204045

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