国内外现有研究认为,农民工的求职渠道非常单一,主要依赖社会关系网络。本文选取典型的珠江三角洲世界工厂所在地——广东省东莞市塘厦镇为案例,对非正规职业中介机构进行了深入调查研究。发现非正规中介机构在农民工的求职过程中发挥着重要作用,帮助农民工实现灵活、即时的就业,其存在是在我国转型期市场改革不断深入的背景下,企业/工厂的用工需求、农民工的求职需要、中介机构的逐利目的和地方政府的宽容态度共同作用的结果。非正规职业中介机构是市场动力作用下的新型农民工非正规求职渠道,是原有的社会关系网络求职渠道的延伸。研究表明,在现阶段中国城市化过程中,非正规的动力在解决农民工求职乃至城市化过程中具有重要的作用。

Previous research findings have often suggested that rural migrant workers rely on social networks as a job-seeking strategy. But in Dongguan city, a typical area of the Pearl River Delta 'world factory', our study has revealed the existence of many informal and semi-legal small-scale private job agencies. The case study was conducted in Tangxia, a township in Dongguan city. The informal job agencies were examined through thorough research, focusing on their spatial distribution, organisational structure and operational processes. Furthermore, the aim was to understand the conditions of the agencies' appearance and utilities for the involved actors. The methodology employed includes explorative field investigation, participant observation, mapping of 45 informal agencies, a survey of 585 migrant workers in the manufacturing sector, interviews and casual talks with 22 migrants and agents. Their location along a street in the 138 Industrial Zone is suitable for collecting job demand information from the firms in the vicinity. The entire process of the agencies' operations is characterised by informality. Five main reasons for the existence of the informal job agencies were identified. The informal job agencies' advantages are that they are non-binding and offer comparably low cost services and flexibility. The attitude of the local government to these informal job agencies is one of tolerations, "opening one eye, and closing the other eye". Moreover, it has become obvious that the informal job-seeking agencies are playing an increasingly important role in the migrant workers' second and further job seeking after they have become familiar with the environment of the 'world factory'. Finally, it became apparent that (1) the informal job agencies' services cover not only the township of Tangxia, but also several places across Dongguan and Shenzhen. This facilitates intraregional information flow and labour mobility within the Pearl River Delta. (2) Most of the involved stakeholders are previous factory workers who gathered personal contacts to staffing departments of factories. (3) Most informal job agencies have been established in a niche, serving both consumers and suppliers of labour, but the lack of control and sanctions to prevent fraud gives them a bad reputation.