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The New Worker / The New Worker Journal is one of several publications initiated by rural-to-urban migrant workers in postsocialist China. Poetry is the most prominent genre in this literature at large and is emphatically present in The New Worker as well. The journal was published at the Migrant Workers Home (or Work-Mates-Home, formerly the Peasant-Mates-Home), an NGO based in Picun in the outskirts of Beijing that engages in cultural education as a means toward the advancement of workers’ rights. The publication takes its name from the expression “the New Worker” as the NGO’s preferred appellation for China’s precarious workers. The Home’s publications exemplify how unofficial publishing establishes lateral linkage between divergent types of cultural production, from elite to subaltern.
打工青年艺术团歌曲作品集: Songs by the Battler Youth Art Troupe / Migrant Worker Youth Art Troupe (later renamed New Workers Art Troupe 新工人艺术团 and New Worker Band 新工人乐团 and sometimes called 新工人乐队) is a product of the Migrant Workers Home. The Art Troupe / Band remains the NGO’s calling card and has performed for precarious (migrant) workers all over China ever since the early 2000s, with Sun Heng and Xu Duo as key members.
打工文化艺术节: Material presented at the Battler Culture and Art Festival / Migrant Worker Culture and Art Festival is a product of the Migrant Workers Home.
新工人文化艺术节: Material presented at the New Worker Culture and Art Festival (formerly the Battler Culture and Art Festival / Migrant Worker Culture and Art Festival) is a product of the Migrant Workers Home.
The practice of unofficial publishing (no ISSN numbers, frequent name changes, etc) leads to special cataloging challenges. The items in question have been subsumed under Xin gong ren because of clear connections and continuity on the ground.
Cover title.
From 2009 published by Beijing gong you zhi jia wen hua fa zhan zhong xin.
打工青年艺术团 (后更名为“新工人艺术团”、“新工人乐团”).