Global Labour and Management Migrations: BAT-China, 1910s–1930s

This chapter explores how the British American Tobacco Company-China generated new labour flows and labour management systems, considering especially the production of difference through the mobilisation of a category of “girls” as a labour force. At the turn of the twentieth century, the global tobacco and cigarette industry occupied the cutting edge of capitalism’s increasing capacity to initiate labour flows and manage large and diverse workforces. The chapter argues first that tobacco companies, along with textiles and garments, innovated by drawing on young female labour, making “girls” central to their business model, a phenomenon that is chronically under-theorised. Second, expansionist tobacco companies also relied on the production of difference in their activation of a global migration of managers from the US South, who implemented management techniques learned from Jim Crow segregation. While race did not pertain in the same way in China, managers utilised Jim Crow segregation as a model for the production of difference on the factory floor through categories of age, gender, and native place.