Abstract: From the perspective of labor process, this paper offers a theoretical analysis of political economy by treating unstable employment as a way of capital accumulation. The study uses the nationally representative survey data of migrant workers and interviews of enterprises, combined with the counterfactual methods such as generalized propensity value matching, to present an empirical case study. The general characteristics of unstable employment and the shaping of the contemporary Chinese migrant workers are discussed from the dual operation logic of the state and capital in order to understand the plight of the citizenization of migrant workers in the economic transition period. The globalization of capital accumulation and labor process have created the phenomenon of large-scale migrant workers and their unstable employment status in China. By dictating the employment flow of migrant workers, capital achieves the goal of maximizing profits without bearing the reproduction cost of laborers. This fundamentally leads to the paradox of the citizenization of migrant workers:the unstable employment helps migrant workers' job mobility in seeking better wages, but it is at the same time not conducive to the relocation of their family members. This form of capital accumulation conceals the fact that the so-called freedom of movement of migrant workers is merely a way for capital to maximize profit margins by so-called "pinching-the-tops" hiring practice. Unstable employment will not raise the collective income of migrant workers but only intensify the competition within the group.

Key words: unstable employment, migrant workers, paradox of citizenization, labor process theory, capital accumulation