Book review of 'Class work: vocational schools and China's urban youth'

Class Work is an ethnography of vocational education (VE) in contemporary urban China. It is based on a full year (2007–2008) of participant observation at two secondary VE schools in the city of Nanjing, complemented with follow-up research in 2012. Class Work is written in a highly accessible style and logically organised into five core chapters, presenting an historical and situated account of VE in China and chapters on VE students; VE teachers, teaching and curricula; VE students’ identities; and VE students entry into the labour market. These five chapters are complemented with a full length introduction outlining the key conceptual, theoretical, and methodological premises and a concluding chapter that asks whether we see here a Chinese precariat in the making and reflects on the question of class consciousness.