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Technomobility in the margins: mobile phones and young rural women in Beijing

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Technomobility in the margins: mobile phones and young rural women in Beijing

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TECHNOMOBILITY IN THE MARGINS: MOBILE PHONES AND YOUNG
RURAL WOMEN IN BEIJING

by

Cara Wallis

_____________________________________________________________________

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(COMMUNICATION)

December 2008

Copyright 2008 Cara Wallis

ii
DEDICATION

This dissertation is dedicated to Pamela Lynn Thompson (1961 – 2007),
dear friend, amazing musician, fellow traveler.

iii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This dissertation is the culmination of many years of scholarship, Chinese
language study, and travel in and out of China that could not have been possible without
the generosity, knowledge, experience, and friendship of many people, both in the U.S.
and in China.
First I thank my husband, John, who has provided with me his unwavering love
and support throughout my doctoral studies, my fieldwork, and writing up this research.
I truly could not have done this project without his constant encouragement, his faith in
my abilities, and his dedication to helping me succeed. Through various triumphs as
well as disappointments he has always been a source of stability and has helped me to
keep my work in perspective within the greater meaning of life.
I am also indebted to my parents who have been extremely supportive of my
academic career. My father always encouraged me to pursue a Ph.D. and my mother’s
many calls, cards, and home-cooked meals throughout this process provided emotional
and physical sustenance. My two sisters, Inger and Laura, have also been a great source
of encouragement, both in L.A. and across the Pacific with cards, phone calls, email,
and care packages, always just when I needed them.
I am profoundly grateful to have worked with such a wonderful faculty committee
through all stages of this project. My chair, Sarah Banet-Weiser, has been an amazing
mentor, teacher, and friend. I have learned so much from her about how to think about
issues of gender and identity, how to apply theory, and how to conduct fieldwork. She
has been tireless in reading drafts, answering questions, and giving advice, and also

iv
gave me much needed encouragement when I was “in the trenches” doing my fieldwork
in Beijing. Sandra Ball-Rokeach has also been a constant source of support and I have
greatly benefited from her vast experience and knowledge about the field of
communication. Manuel Castells added analytical and intellectual rigor to this project,
and I have gained much from his theoretical insights into technology and society.
Stanley Rosen has been extremely generous in sharing his knowledge about all aspects
of China and introducing me to others in the field. I am thankful to other faculty who
have provided intellectual and emotional support during my time at USC, including
Anne Balsamo, Francois Bar, Mimi Ito, Josh Kun, Larry Gross, Peggy McLaughlin, and
Alison Trope, and to peers as well: Deborah Hanan, Becky Herr, Heather Hether,
Jingfang Liu, Carrie Anne Platt, and Araba Sey.
Many friends also offered their constant encouragement – with dinners, drinks,
coffees, phone calls, text messages, Facebook pokes and the like: Lucienne Aarsen,
Gregory Anderson, Reka Clausen, Nancy Currey, Dydia DeLyser, Melina Dorian, Gaby
Solomon, Jenn Vega La Serna, and Jen Teasdale. Judy Marasco has been a great friend,
and we have shared so many experiences in and out of China that I feel like her soul is
in this project as well.
Arianne Gaetano is someone I met shortly before I embarked on this research, and
her deep knowledge of China and migrant women as well as her friendship and
encouragement at various stages of this project have been indispensable. I am grateful
to Jack Qiu as well for sharing his insights into mobile phones and migrant workers.

v
I am very fortunate to know so many exceptional people in Beijing. Sun Wusan
and Bu Wei were both students of mine long ago at the Chinese Academy of Social
Sciences (CASS) Graduate School English Language Center, and their friendship has
been a significant part of my China experience. During my fieldwork I became their
student. Bu Wei sponsored my visiting scholar visa at the Institute for Journalism and
Communication at CASS, and I could not have undertaken this research without her.
She constantly shared with me her knowledge about China’s migrant population,
introduced me to other scholars, and invited me to conferences and to accompany her
on research trips. We shared so many cups of coffee while discussing research that she
and Starbucks in Beijing will be forever linked in my mind. Sun Wusan graciously
translated interview, survey, diary, and consent forms. She helped me read Chinese
articles as well and introduced me to the women at one of the hair salons where I spent
much of my time in Beijing. She also made me feel part of her family through including
me in family dinners and on trips outside of Beijing.
Liu Xiaohong was also so supportive at various stages of this research,
particularly in helping me to think about identity and autonomy in the Chinese context.
Wang Yihong’s assistance was also indispensable to numerous aspects of this project,
including introducing me to key informants and helping with initial interviews. Xu
Yang is a wonderful friend and language tutor. I am thankful to other friends and
colleagues in Beijing as well: Liu Yanbin, Cai Yiping, Dai Jing, Jude Payne, Zhang Qi,
Sherri Weerheim, Tan Shen, and Guo Liang.
I am deeply indebted to Chen Shanshan at the Beijing Cultural Development
Center for her kindness and all of her assistance. Without her help, significant portions

vi
of this research would not have been possible, including my access to the Practical
Skills Training Center for Rural Women. I am also extremely grateful to those at the
school who welcomed me, and I continue to be moved by their dedication to improving
the lives of rural women: Luo Zhao Hong, the director; Chen Hu, the head of education;
and Liang Hong Yun, one of the computer instructors. I owe special thanks to Liang
Hong Yun for opening up her classroom to me and for helping me to meet her students.
Many women at the Migrant Women’s Club also have my heartfelt appreciation,
including Han Hui Min, Fang Qing Xia, and Luo Zhe Liangliang. I owe special thanks
to Jiao Fang Feng for accompanying me to migrant markets to meet rural women and
for taking me to a migrant school in Beijing.
Li Tao and Li Zhen at the Culture and Communication Center for Facilitators
were also crucial to my research. I am so thankful to them for enabling me to participate
in numerous activities at Facilitator and for giving me a chance to learn firsthand about
migrant workers’ experience in Beijing. I am also very grateful to other Facilitator staff
and members who spent so much of their time answering my questions and who made
me feel so welcome.
I thank Guo Anru at Planet Finance in Beijing as well. She was so generous and
helpful, especially in introducing me to Yan Zheng, the Deputy Director of the Xicheng
District Library. There I was able to meet several migrant workers enrolled in a weekly
computer class.
Thanks to students and friends who helped with translations of difficult academic
articles: Luo Xinping, Alex Li, and Johnny Wang.

vii
I am grateful to the Annenberg School for Communication for many forms of
financial support. This fieldwork also would not have been possible without a National
Resource Center Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) grant, administered by the
East Asian Studies Center at the University of Southern California. I received two
summer FLAS language study grants as well. USC’s Center for Feminist Research also
provided generous travel and research funding. Thanks to Grace Ryu, Kin Hau, and
Raquel Gutierrez for their administrative help.
Finally, words cannot express how indebted I am to all the migrant women who
participated in this study. I thank them from the bottom of my heart for sharing with me
and teaching me not only about the role of mobile phones in their lives, but also about
hope, dignity, and perseverance. They truly changed my life.

viii
TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICTATION ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii
ABSTRACT xi
INTRODUCTION 1
Introduction Endnotes 8
CHAPTER ONE: MOBILITY AND FLUIDITY: GENDER, IDENTITY,
AND TECHNOLOGY: AN INTRODUCTORY FRAMEWORK 9
The Fluidity of Identity 13
Gender Identity 15
Difference and Hybridity 19
Contemporary China: Gender, Class, and Place 22
An Intersectional Framework 24
Theorizing Technology 28
Technological Culture 30
Extending the Social Shaping of Technology 32
The Social Shaping of the Mobile Phone: Communication as
Transmission and Ritual 34
The Physical Self and the Presentation of the Self 36
Fashion/Style 38
Social Networks 39
Autonomy 41
Gender 42
Time and Space 44
Research Objective 48
Methodology 49
The Problem with Ethnography 49
Reconciling Ethnography and “Experience” 54
The Fieldwork 57
Overview of the Chapters 67
Chapter One Endnotes 70

CHAPTER TWO: MARKET REFORMS AND (DIS)CONTINUITY
IN POST-SOCIALIST CHINA 80
Hukou and the Urban-Rural Divide 83
Hukou 1955 – 1978 83
Economic Reforms and Inequality 87
The Floating Population and Hukou Erosion 89
China’s Dagongmei 93

ix
Reasons for Migration 94
Types of Employment 96
Prejudice and Discrimination 97
Female Migrants and Suzhi 100
China’s Consumer Revolution 103
From a “Society of Relative Comfort” to a “Harmonious Society” 108
The Construction/Consumption of Femininity in the Post-Mao Era 109
Telecommunications Development in the Reform Era 115
Beginnings 116
“Market Socialism” and the Telecommunications Revolution 118
The Mobile Revolution 121
Mobile Phone Use in China 123
Conclusion 129
Chapter Two Endnotes 130

CHAPTER THREE: “MY FIRST BIG URBAN PURCHASE:” MOBILE
PHONE AS METONYM FOR MODERNITY 142
Modernity and Modernities 145
Modernity and Difference 146
Foucault, Modern Power, and Gender 150
Modernity, Consumption, and the Self 154
Becoming Modern: Mobile Phone as Metonym for Modernity 156
The Mobile Phone and the Presentation of the Self 158
The Mobile Phone and the “Gender of Modernity” 164
Modern Skills 172
Conclusion 177
Chapter Three Endnotes 179

CHAPTER FOUR: IMMOBILE MOBILITY: NAVIGATING
NETWORKS, SOCIALITY, DESIRE, AND INTIMACY 184
Social Capital and Guanxi 187
Bourdieu and Social Capital 188
The Egocentric Self 190
Guanxi 192
Mobile Phones and the Social World of Migrant Women 196
Expanding Social Networks 198
Enriching Social Networks 202
Pre-written Text Messages with Chinese Characteristics 205
Camera Phones and the Construction of Reality 209
Mobile Phones and Intimate Relationships 220
Marriage Customs in China 220
Migrant Women and the “Marriage Dilemma” 225
Dating and the Mobile Phone 228
Conclusion 241
Chapter Four Endnotes 244

x
CHAPTER FIVE: “TECHNOLOGIES OF FREEDOM?”: MOBILE
PHONES, RESISTANCE, AND SURVEILLANCE IN THE WORKPLACE 252
Cell Phones and Surveillance in China: A Top-Down View 256
Foucault, Gender, and Resistance 258
Workplace Control, Resistance, and Compliance 261
Socio-techno Resistance 263
Restaurants 264
Marketplaces 270
Mobile Phones and Surveillance 276
The Boutique Assistant 278
The Maintenance Worker 282
“Just a Girl:” Silence as Surveillance 285
Mobile Phones and Economic Outcomes 288
Does a Mobile Phone Help Increase Income? 289
Mobile Phones and Job Seeking 293
Conclusion 296
Chapter Five Endnotes 298

CONCLUSION 302
Summary of the Findings 303
Significance of the Research 308
Conclusion Endnotes 316

REFERENCES 317

APPENDICES
Appendix 1: Interview Questionnaire 344
Appendix 2: Mobile Phone Use Diary 346

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ABSTRACT

This dissertation, the result of 10 months of ethnographic fieldwork, is an
exploration of the ways that young rural-to-urban migrant women working in the low-
level service sector in Beijing engage with mobile phones to negotiate their identity and
create meaning in relation to themselves and others in the city.
This research is situated within the particular socio-cultural and historical context
of Beijing in the new millennium, where nearly three decades of “socialism with
Chinese characteristics” have resulted in an urban, consumer-driven, networked society
that exists far removed from rural regions that are discursively constructed as
“backward” and “other.” Occupying a space in between is a vast population of rural
“peasants” who have journeyed to China’s cities to seek work and a better life despite
extremely difficult conditions that are a result of both structural impediments and
cultural prejudices. In such a milieu, young rural women in particular are configured as
passive, of “low quality,” and in need of “development.” Drawing from theories of the
fluidity of identity, hybridity, the social construction of gender, and Foucaultian notions
of power and discourse, this research uses an intersectional framework that considers
gender, class, and place to understand migrant women’s diverse engagement with and
understanding of mobile phones.
For the women in this study, mobile phones become key signifiers of urban
modernity and citizenship in China’s burgeoning consumer society. They are also
linked to “modern” notions of essentialized femininity and as such are associated with
gendered discourses and practices. In addition, cell phones enrich and expand social
networks and open up new possibilities for dating and intimacy. At the same time,

xii
mobile phones can create new disciplinary practices that lead to exclusion, and
employers use mobile phones as a method of control.
This study adds to the body of scholarship that insists that practices and
understandings of new communication technologies must be studied not only among a
certain age group or gender, but also as these are intricately connected to and arise
within a particular discursive context. In this way, we gain a richer understanding of
“technological culture.”

1
INTRODUCTION

Our flight had been delayed, and after a wild and crazy bus ride from the
airport to the train station – screeching tires, incessant horn honking,
driver (presumably) swearing – we boarded the train for the 17-hour ride
from Beijing to Changchun in China’s northeast. We each had a “hard
sleeper,” which actually was more comfortable than it sounds except for the
cigarette smoke everywhere. At 5:30 the next morning a train employee
came down the aisle and took everyone’s sheets away. Ten minutes later
loud Chinese pop music began playing through a speaker. We passed miles
and miles of countryside where farmers were plowing fields or were leading
donkey carts, and finally arrived at the Changchun train station at 7:00am.
As we climbed the stairs from the platform, dramatic military–like music
blared through crackling speakers as a woman’s voice counted in Chinese.
At the top of the steps we were met by a large group of Chinese workers, all
in blue Mao suits doing calisthenics to the music and the counting. What a
sight! As we exited the train station, the scene was much different. Young
women were wearing brightly colored outfits, some mixing plaid skirts with
striped blouses. There were also guys with t-shirts with English sayings on
them. A few farmers were selling fruit and other vendors sold what looked
like long doughnuts. Crowds of Chinese swarmed around us, some mouths
agape, others staring and smiling. We stared and smiled back.

The passage above is taken from a diary entry of mine written in June 1988 during
my first trip to China as a student in a language exchange program. I begin with this
excerpt because it underscores the profound changes that have taken place in China in
the last few decades, including large-scale rural-to-urban migration, urbanization, and
the birth of a consumer society. Written nearly 20 years ago, it also reflects some of the
key themes that form the basis for this dissertation – issues of gender, identity, and
difference; the mobility of people from various walks of life; and the unevenness in
possibilities and reasons for this mobility. Of course, absent from this brief narrative is
another type of mobility that is central to this project – communicative mobility via the
cell phone. In 1988 most people in China’s northeast – like most people everywhere –

2
had never seen nor heard of something that the Chinese now call a shouji. 10 years later
their country would have the largest number of these mobile devices, along with the
greatest peacetime internal migration, in the world.
1

That summer in Changchun at Northeast Normal University, though relatively
ignorant of their meaning and significance, I observed the nascent processes that had
already begun changing the People’s Republic of China. A decade earlier the Chinese
government had initiated a gradual policy of reform and opening (gaige kaifang), and as
a result cities like Beijing and Shanghai as well as the Special Economic Zones (SEZs)
set up along the southern coastal regions were experiencing considerable
transformation. Compared to these areas, however, Changchun, the “Detroit of China” –
home to the nation’s first automotive factory, which produced the Liberation truck and
the Red Flag sedan – was a bit of a backwater, despite being a city of over one million
people. It showed signs of economic reform – there were some private restaurants and
at a few open markets “peasant farmers” sold produce laid out on burlap sacks or piled
on the back of donkey carts – but most people were employed in government-owned
work units, and the city had not shed much of its socialist austerity. Many adults still
wore the “Mao suit” in shades of blue or gray, and the only American item for sale in
shops was Coca Cola.
The students who became our friends and “language partners” at the university
were eager to learn about the world outside of China. Though they had extreme pride in
their own country, over and over in conversations we were told that China was “an
ancient country with a long history,” that it was “a developing country,” and that it was
doing its best to “catch up.” It was as if everyone was reciting the same passage they

3
had memorized from their English language textbook. Each time I heard these words I
did not know how to respond except to nod and agree that yes, China was an ancient
country. Such longings for “modernity,” largely constructed as lying elsewhere yet
undoubtedly within reach, are by now familiar in discussions of East and West, of
center and periphery. They also constitute a central theme in China’s own internal
mapping of urban versus rural, progress and backwardness, and belonging as opposed to
difference.
After that first summer I did not return to China again until 1990, one year after
the student demonstrations in Tiananmen Square had ended in such heartbreak and
tragedy. At that time, the legacy of Tiananmen was still palpable – from the increased
military presence and the tank tracks etched into the pavement down a long portion of
Changan Jie (the Boulevard of Eternal Peace), to the half-built skyscrapers that dotted
the city landscape like steel skeletons, the result of foreign investment that had pulled
out in the wake of the government crackdown. As an English instructor to scholars at a
government institute, I was warned not to bring up “sensitive” subjects in the
classroom. However, once my students became more comfortable with me and the other
teachers, they were eager to talk about all kinds of topics; we even learned from them
that they had been told we were part of an American government conspiracy to try to
change China through “peaceful evolution” (heping yanbian).
Though Beijing in 1990 was quite different from Changchun in 1988, still, most
people I knew there did not have telephones, everyone rode a bicycle, and there was
only a nascent consumer culture. At that time, China still had rather stringent policies
regarding population mobility (which will be explained in more detail in chapter two),

4
yet there were clearly a large number of rural-to-urban migrants residing in Beijing.
Like most people, I bought vegetables from peasant farmers, ate at private restaurants
run by ethnic Koreans from the northeast, and purchased clothes from southern Chinese
who operated stalls at the open markets. Overall, however, the pace of change during
this time was slow.
Then, in 1992 Deng Xiaoping embarked on his “Southern Tour” (nanxun) in
which he promoted further marketization of China’s economy, or “socialism with
Chinese characteristics.” I recall seeing endless television reportage of this event, with
Deng waving and shaking hands with local officials, though I didn’t fully realize the
profound import of these talks at the time. Within weeks, however, Beijing as well as
other parts of China began to change as economic development shifted into high gear.
The construction sites that had lain dormant for nearly three years suddenly came to
life, and for this to happen and to start building a domestic service economy, cheap,
flexible labor was drawn from rural areas. By the time I returned to Beijing a year and a
half later, this time as a student of Chinese language, more development was visible,
more western influence had arrived (I had a part-time job as a telemarketer selling
Hilton hotel membership cards – I was a poor saleswoman), and more migrants were
residing in the city.
I left China for a while in the late nineties, and when I returned in 2002, nothing
could have prepared me for the Beijing in which I landed. The quaint little Korean
shack where I had eaten dinner at least once a week and the vegetable market next door
were gone and in their place stood a 30-story shopping plaza and office complex. All
over the city familiar landmarks had been razed and replaced by massive structures.

5
Cars were everywhere as were Japanese and western products. On the sidewalks, what
had formerly been a sea of black heads was interrupted by trendy Chinese youth
sporting orange or maroon spiked hair. Beijing had changed so dramatically that I had
to take a map with me wherever I went because I kept getting lost. Many friends who
were “intellectuals” – meaning they were teachers or scholars – had joined with
thousands of other Chinese and “jumped into the sea” of business (xiahai), a few even
had cars, and every night someone insisted on taking me out to dinner at an upscale
restaurant, the likes of which had never existed before. Still, while so many people were
doing well, at the same time the rural-to-urban migrants who worked in many of
Beijing’s restaurants and shops lived a much different life, as evidenced in the brick
hovels that had been built to house them. When I asked one Beijing friend about this
she commented, “There are so many nongmingong (migrant workers); soon there will
more of them than us.”
In 2002, though at times in Beijing I felt like I was on another planet, what left the
most indelible imprint on me was a trip I took to a remote mountainous region of
Sichuan province. During the two-day journey I noticed satellite dishes covering the
hills above every small village. Then, at a tourist destination seemingly in the middle of
nowhere, where our hotel only had hot water a few hours a day, people everywhere
were using cell phones. How, I wondered, is this happening in a supposedly developing
country when I can’t even get cell phone reception in several areas of Los Angeles?
Right around this time, some of the first mobile phone studies started coming out,
and I was especially intrigued by the work of Mimi Ito, Rich Ling, James Katz and
others who were examining how this personal, portable technology was becoming a

6
central artifact for identity construction and social networking, especially among youth
populations.
2
Yet with few exceptions, the subjects of these studies were primarily
educated, relatively affluent, urban teenagers and college students in developed
countries. Of course, research was being done on mobile phones and development, for
example Jonathan Donner’s work among micro-entrepreneurs in Africa.
3
However,
when I thought about the youth in Ito, Ling, and others’ studies, it made me wonder –
what about mobile phone use by their more economically or socially marginalized peers,
and/or those not operating within familiar modes of parental and school organization and
control? Without the assumed choices between a fixed-line and a cell phone, nor the
mobility in daily life that is – rhetorically anyway – the reason for the mobile phone, and
when bound by extremely imposing structural and material constraints, how do people
use cell phones in their everyday lives? And how do issues of gender, class, and other
aspects of identity influence such usage? Up to that point there had been very little
published on mobile phone use in China, so as I began to formulate my research
questions, and think about existing gaps, my experience in China and the phenomenal
changes that were going on there made me realize it would be a rich site for studying
such processes.
China’s migrant population has been the focus of numerous studies by both
Chinese and western scholars, yet one aspect of their lives that has remained relatively
unexamined is their use of new communication technologies. However, the magnitude
of migration in China is matched perhaps only by its growth in telecommunications. In a
world where everyday life is increasingly constituted by and within networks of
communication, this research explores how young rural-to-urban migrant women

7
working in the low-level service sector in Beijing engage with mobile phones to create
meaning and negotiate their lives in the city, in the midst of the disjunctures,
dislocations, and contradictions that characterize contemporary China.

8
Introduction Endnotes

1. The data on mobile phones comes from China’s Ministry of Information
Industry; the figure on migration comes from Jacka, Rural Women, 5.

2. See, for example, Ito et al., Personal, Portable, Pedestrian; Katz and Aakhus,
Perpetual Contact; Ling, Mobile Connection.

3. Donner, “What Mobile Phones Mean.”

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CHAPTER ONE: MOBILITIY AND FLUIDITY: GENDER, IDENTITY, AND
TECHNOLOGY – AN INTRODUCTORY FRAMEWORK

As a study of rural-to-urban migrant women and their use of mobile phones, this
dissertation is, at its core, about mobility – of individuals, identities, and technologies.
Indeed, mobility – both real and imagined – figures as perhaps the defining
representation of our globalized world. Anthropologist Arjun Appadurai uses the notion
of scapes – ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes, and ideoscapes – to
capture the movement of people, media, technology, capital, and ideas that traverse the
globe, facilitated by communication and transportation technologies.
1
Such flows are
often impervious to borders and inseparable from the transformation of individual and
communal identities. Through deterritorializing culture, space, place, and time, they
also necessitate new modes of conceptualizing agency, autonomy, social change, and
power dynamics. As Appadurai states, “The new global cultural economy has to be seen
as a complex, overlapping, disjunctive order that cannot any longer be understood in
terms of existing center-periphery models.”
2

Appadurai grounds his argument in the overriding significance of two constitutive
forces that make such disjuncture possible. The first is the pervasiveness of electronic
media, particularly mass media, that flow around the world, creating in the process new
resources for “the construction of imagined selves and imagined worlds” and “for
experiments with self-making.”
3
The second is mass migration, that, when combined
with the “rapid flow of mass-mediated images, scripts, and sensations,” produces a
“new order of instability in the production of modern subjectivities.”
4
These two
phenomena not only link globalization with local imaginings of modernity, but they

10
also cause instability in self-identity. They thus impel ordinary people in everyday life
to deploy their imagination in making decisions about their way of life, dreams, and
desires. To Appadurai, imagination is not the same as fantasy, escape, or mere
contemplation; rather, it is “an organized field of social practices, a form of work …
and a form of negotiation between sites of agency (individuals) and globally defined
fields of possibility.”
5

Appadurai’s connection between migration and print and visual media as
constitutive of the construction of individual and collective identity certainly is
applicable to China, where three decades of economic reform and societal restructuring
have engendered severe discontinuities and ruptures that have also created new values,
new modes of being in the world, and new subject positions. Yet, today nearly two
decades after Appadurai wrote his seminal essay, to his paradigm of migration and
media as productive of “modernity at large” must be added the phenomenon of mobile
communication. For the mobile phone also enables the traversal of physical and
geographic borders, the puncturing of boundaries of time and space, and the creation of
new modes of social networking and identity. It too can be linked to Appadurai’s notion
of imagination, in that through cell phones people have the potential for constant
connectivity with distant others in faraway places, they may become empowered as
autonomous subjects vis-à-vis other social actors, and they may also engage in forms of
activism and resistance that can even help to topple governments.
6

For all of these reasons, the mobile phone also seems to be the ultimate
technology –both practically and symbolically – of what Manuel Castells calls a “new
form of society, the network society,” which has changed our conception of time and

11
space and has led to new forms of work and social organization.
7
It has also ushered in a
world that is becoming increasingly characterized by networks of communication and
the thorough integration of new communication technologies into peoples’ everyday
lives. However, in Castells’ articulation of the network society there exists what he calls
the “double logic of inclusion and exclusion” in “networks of production, consumption,
communication, and power.”
8
While not the same as the digital divide, clearly those at
the exclusionary margins of this networked society are likely to have an impoverished
or nonexistent communication technology environment. They also fall into what
Castells calls “generic labor,” meaning labor that is flexible, disposable, unskilled, and,
not surprisingly, or perhaps therefore, increasingly, feminized.
9

Notions of inclusion and exclusion thus draw attention to the fact that how the
mobile phone is used, what it means, and how emancipatory it really is all depend on
numerous factors, not least of which concerns who the user is in what context. In this
regard, compared to the mobile phone, the mobile person has been – and must be –
configured somewhat more heterogeneously. As a “cosmopolitan,” he or she is one who
traverses the globe with relative freedom and whose cultivated knowledge enables a
sense of savoir faire within diverse cultures. The high-powered executive, increasingly
aided by a range of digital devices including a mobile phone, is certainly one
representation of this worldly sophisticate. Mostly celebrated, though occasionally
scorned, the cosmopolitan is symbolic of the key actors that “matter” in the network
society’s tangled web of power and value.
In stark contrast to the cosmopolitan stands the migrant. Though also implicated in
the webs of influence and affluence that constitute the cosmopolitan’s world, he or she

12
lurks at the peripheries (despite Appadurai’s insistence that these no longer matter). In
the global imagining, the migrant is most often the cosmopolitan’s invisible other.
While he surfs the web and presides over board meetings, she cleans his home, or
assembles his iPod in a sweatshop in a developing country, or satisfies his desires
through the global sex trade. The choice of gender pronouns here is deliberate, meant to
evoke stereotype as much as reality. The implied notions of class and place are
intentional as well. For in the brief portrait just painted, the cosmopolitan is most likely
western (or perhaps Japanese); the migrant is almost without doubt in or from the
developing world. While the migrant is mobile in the sense of leaving home for work,
in the destination he or she usually experiences a relatively confined social world.
This study of rural-to-urban migrant women, then, is not only about mobility but
also immobility. It examines how social constructions of gender, class, and place-based
identities produce particular engagements with mobile technologies and how such
engagement in turn produces new forms of identity, autonomy, agency, and sociality. It
is situated within the context of China’s modernizing project, a social and cultural
milieu that offers migrant women greater opportunities for personal autonomy while at
the same time maintaining rigid structural and cultural impediments to this autonomy.
This study asks how, in the midst of extremely limited and limiting material conditions,
young migrant women use mobile phones to construct identity and to resist – as well as
possibly reify – their marginal position.
As a basis for this research, I build a theoretical framework that considers how the
self, and by extension gender and other markers of identity, as well as uses and
understandings of technology, are created within social relations. More specifically, I

13
draw from theories that posit the socially constructed nature of identity, gender, and
hybridity, and then develop an intersectional framework that considers gender, class,
and place for understanding migrant women’s experience in the city and their use of
mobile phones. I next discuss a notion of “technological culture” as well as the
extension of the social shaping of technology as a means of understanding and
analyzing technology as a social practice. I follow this discussion by summarizing the
findings of youth uses of cell phones that are relevant to this study. I conclude with my
research objective, methodology, and an overview of the chapters in the dissertation.

The Fluidity of Identity
Craig Calhoun has stated that identity, as part of the project of subjectivity, is
“always a construction no matter how much it feels like a discovery” and is “always
constructed and situated in a field amid a flow of contending cultural discourses.”
10

Manuel Castells calls identity “people’s source of meaning and experience.”
11
It is
plural, dependent on one’s cultural and social milieu, and is shaped by relations of
power. Stuart Hall has also persuasively argued that identity is not stable and fixed;
rather it is fluid and is constitutive of an individual’s relation to others and to society at
large, and as such has social, psychological, political, and physical consequences.
Particularly in a world characterized by so many flows of people, cultures, labor, and
images – Appadurai’s scapes – identity must be viewed as “a process of becoming
rather than being,” not a clasping at “roots but a coming-to-terms-with our routes.”
12

For this reason Hall believes it is more appropriate to speak of identities, “which are
never unified and … never singular but multiply constructed across different, often

14
intersecting and antagonistic, discourses, practices and positions.”
13
In linking identity
and discourse, Hall draws attention to how identity is shaped by a cultural milieu and
structures that often reinforce difference and produce unequal power relations.
Theorizing identity, then, necessitates theorizing power, and Michel Foucault’s
notion of power as productive, rather than solely repressive, is particularly useful here.
Foucault insists that power and discourse are mutually constitutive and that both
produce social knowledge through practices and language that foreclose what can and
cannot be acknowledged, spoken, or given material form.
14
To Foucault, discourse does
not represent the real; rather, it creates the real and there is no reality outside of
discourse. In the same way, subjects do not produce discourse, but discourse produces
subject positions that individuals occupy.
15
If discourse produces what we know and
who we are, then it necessarily constructs identity and defines and limits possibilities of
individual and collective agency.
16
In other words, it is discourse that produces
subjectivity, and people occupy subject positions as a result of a multitude of practices,
norms, and power relations.
In reconciling a Foucaultian notion of power and discourse, possibilities for
individual agency, and the workings of the subconscious, Hall says we must
conceptualize identity as “as a process of identification”
17
(emphasis in original), which
changes over time as history and our location in various relationships all affect how we
understand ourselves. Identification is a construction yet one that is contingent; it is a
“suturing” of both the unconscious and practices based in discourse. In a frequently
cited passage, Hall thus states that identities are “points of temporary attachment to the
subject positions which discursive practices construct for us.”
18
Clearly, female

15
migrants in Beijing must balance many (sometimes contradictory) identities. As
anthropologist Arianne Gaetano’s fieldwork has shown, they are at once expected to be
dutiful daughters, little working sisters, responsible employees, Chinese citizens, and, in
the future, virtuous wives and mothers.
19
Each of these identities has different social,
psychological, political, and physical consequences shaped by discursive power
relations. At the same time, there is nothing inherently stable about any of these
identities (or subject positions). Particularly due to the ambivalent space that rural
women occupy in China’s cities, they will likely experience changing processes of
identification as a result of new experiences and new practices, of which engagement
with technology may be one.

Gender Identity
A recognition that identity is produced by discourse and experience also reveals
the socially constructed nature of multiple axes of identity, namely gender. In her
examination of the role of mediated images and discourses, Teresa de Lauretis has
shown that gendered subjectivity is “the product and process of both representation and
self-representation” and not a female “essence.”
20
Furthermore, through theorizing the
connection between social constructs of gender and the body, several feminist scholars
have persuasively argued that physical differences between male and female bodies “are
socially meaningless until social practices transform them into social facts.”
21
As Susan
Bordo states, the human body is “a politically inscribed entity, its physiology and
morphology shaped by histories and practices of containment and control.”
22

16
One of the most significant manifestations of such “containment and control” can
be found in western dualisms of nature/culture, body/spirit, logic/passion, and
active/passive that have been mapped onto male and female bodies, respectively.
23
Such
dualities of course are not symmetrical; in each pair the attribute configured as “male”
has traditionally been thought of as superior and holding higher value in society. These
find their corollary in Chinese notions of yin/yang, where in a reversal, the first part of
the duality (yin) is associated with the female, yet still indicates the “less desirable”
qualities of softness, passivity, coldness, and slowness, while the yang, or male half,
signifies hardness, activity, heat, and quickness.
24
Such dualisms are not just relevant to
metaphysical theorizing; rather, they have profound social, cultural, and individual
consequences as they permeate medical, artistic, literary, psychological, and popular
culture discourses.
25

Thinking about gender as a set of social practices and discourses leads to Judith
Butler’s theory of performativity, which shifts the focus from being a “primary identity”
or gender to doing gender. To Butler, there is “no gender identity behind the
expressions of gender; … identity is performatively constituted by the very
‘expressions’ that are said to be its results.”
26
In other words, gender is produced at the
moment we speak it and cite it as already in existence. Gender identity is thus a
signifying practice that is the effect of discourse.
27
Hence, gender is an effect, not a
cause of our biology, actions, or experiences. It is crucial to Butler’s theory that gender
is performative, not performed. If the latter were true, this would presuppose a core,
originary gender that can be performed. If gender is performative, then gender is an
effect of the performance of the endless repetition of citations of gender, not the cause.

17
Because gender is socially constructed and performative, it is impossible to have a
singular, universal notion of “woman” (or man). Denise Riley calls “women” a fictional
entity that is “historically, discursively constructed, and always relatively to other
categories which themselves change.”
28
Riley clearly shows how the meaning of the
term “women” has changed and evolved over time, in particular with the rise of certain
scientific and political discourses of the 18
th
and 19
th
centuries. In other words, across
time and space, different females occupy various positions based on class, race, or
socioeconomic status, among other things, so to be a woman or a man cannot mean the
same thing for everyone.
In the context of China, such shifting social constructions of gender also have a
long history, stretching as far back as the mid-Qing dynasty.
29
As Tani Barlow has
shown, different terms for women, such as funü and nüxing, have been employed in
official discourse at various times, each serving a particular political agenda and
attempting to delimit female subject positions within a specific socio-political context.
While in the Qing dynasty, funü located woman within traditional kinship relations,
nüxing was an early twentieth century invention of reformist anti-Confucian
intellectuals who sought to instantiate a universal Chinese Woman. On the other hand,
for much of the history of the People’s Republic, funü has been what Barlow calls a
“catechrisis, that is, an imaginary master word with very real political effects and
power.”
30
Under the Chinese Communist Party, funü became a politicized subject,
situated within discourses of the nation and family, and as such “one site for state
socialist transformation.”
31
It also served as a means for the state to regulate social
relationships and maintain gender differences and hierarchies. The fact that all Chinese

18
women did not (and do not) experience the subject position funü in the same way – due
to differences in Maoist political categories, spatial location, and ethnicity – again
shows the impossibility of a singular concept of woman or funü.
Hence, despite my use of the term “women,” this project is grounded in the
epistemological certainty that there is no epistemological certainty of “women” or
“Chinese women” or, more specifically, “Chinese migrant women.” Still, though gender
identity is socially constructed and not biologically determined, its effects are no less
real or powerful. As will be explored further in the next chapter, media and popular
discourses in China tend to construct an overwhelmingly negative view of China’s
female migrants – as passive, backward, and of general “low quality.” Yet recent
inquiries into their hopes and struggles reveal that, while clearly constrained by forces
beyond their control – of discourse, capital, patriarchy, societal norms, and state laws –
they are not just victims, nor are they a unified “mass.” Instead, they have diverse
backgrounds and experiences, and evince myriad forms of both resistance to as well as
compliance with their position.
A way to reconcile the importance of maintaining gender as a category of analysis
and at the same time avoiding gender essentialism has been put forth by Linda Martín
Alcoff through her articulation of positionality. Positionality acknowledges that gender
is a construct, shaped within a particular “historical discursive constellation,” yet
positionality denies a totalizing view of discourse and the subject and thus allows for
agency through asserting the importance of a fluid matrix of practices, habits, and
language in constructing an individual’s gendered subjectivity.
32
In other words, a
woman’s position within a given network of economic, cultural, political, and

19
ideological factors will shape her identity and her understanding of herself as a woman.
As contexts and social networks change, so too do the needs, perspectives, and interests
of women. As Alcoff states, “If it is possible to identify women by their position within
this network of relations, then it becomes possible to ground a feminist argument for
women, not on a claim that their innate capacities are being stunted, but that their
position within the network lacks power and mobility and requires change.”
33
Indeed,
migrant women’s position within Chinese society lacks power, yet as her context
changes from rural to urban, her social networks may change, as may her needs and
perspectives; in this way, the position of “migrant woman” is identifiable yet never
fixed.

Difference and Hybridity
As should be clear from the above discussion, in many ways identity (and
identification) relies not only on representation, but also on negation for its formation
(e.g. male/female, yin/yang). According to Stuart Hall, on the one hand, identity is the
result of a relationship between ourselves and an Other. He adds, “Only when there is
an Other can you know who you are.”
34
The self and the Other are thus mutually
constitutive. At the same time, our identities can never be located outside of
representation, which not only are constructions of certain identities, but also construct
these same identities. In other words, there is never “our selves and then the language in
which we describe ourselves.”
35
In calling attention to the function of both negation and
representation, Hall provides a powerful means for understanding identity as well as the
operations of racism and sexism. These function by negation, by defining what they are

20
not, and by futilely attempting to erase an excess. They also are sustained within
representations that create and reproduce difference that is often constructed through
binaries.
In contemporary China, the differences and inequalities between male/female as
well as rural/urban, migrant/resident, and worker/boss are just some of the powerful
binaries and negations shaping young migrant women’s identity. These are reinforced
through structural inequalities, such as salary differentials, gender-stratified labor
realms, and the rigid hukou, or household registration system, which has separated
Chinese society geographically as well as culturally. Even though less stringent than in
the past, the discriminatory nature of the hukou policy as well as urban prejudice against
rural peasants operate to position migrants in China’s cities as second-class citizens. As
Zhang Li has stated, “These two birth-ascribed groups, once mapped on two different
kinds of places—the countryside and city—are now brought together in the same urban
space, leading to the formation of a new ‘two class’ urban society in the post-Mao
era.”
36

Still, it is crucial to attempt to understand identity beyond binaries, as Homi
Bhabha has sought to do with his theory of hybridity, which interrogates the liminal
space between the culture of the colonized and the colonizer, where selfhood – both
individual and communal – can be imagined in innovate ways beyond the singularities
of race, class, and gender. Through rejecting a definite separation between
inclusion/exclusion, margin/center, and East/West, Bhabha shows the reciprocal nature
of cultural construction and transformation.

21
In The Location of Culture, Bhabha theorizes what he calls an “interstitial passage
between fixed identifications [that] opens up the possibility of a cultural hybridity that
entertains difference without an assumed imposed hierarchy.”
37
This “third space”
introduces ambivalence, where meaning and symbols cannot be fixed and where the
subject of knowledge cannot be easily determined. A hybrid identity is never pre-given
but is always a production, a transformation, a splitting of self and Other. Bhabha’s
third space also creates the possibility for agency, particularly for the subaltern, who is
reinscribed into a location where contestation is possible. Furthermore, Bhabha’s
theorizing of hybridity is an effort to erase essentialism and to problematize the effects
of power. While hybridity is still produced through power, it is at the same time “the
name for the strategic reversal of the process of domination.”
38
If power produces
hybridity rather than repression, then a significant shift in perspective can occur – the
ambivalence allows a space for subversion and the intervention of subjugated
knowledges. Thus, Bhabha’s theory of hybrid identity is intricately connected to a
politics of resistance.
In celebrating hybridity in theory, Bhabha possibly ignores the reality that for
many, living on the margin or in the “third space” means disenfranchisement and abject
poverty. Hybridity has also been criticized for invoking the very binaries it is meant to
destabilize.
39
However, retaining the possibility of hybridity is a way to disrupt the
power of the dominant discourse through displacing socially constructed hierarchies and
shifting the terms of the construction of meaning. In creating an alternate space for
possibility, hybridity invokes the multiple modes of power and agency that can flow
across and between fluid rather than fixed categories. If identity is in fact fluid, there are

22
possibilities for those who are disenfranchised to develop a sense of agency and
autonomy, despite other obstacles. Particularly in the lives of rural women, their
experience in the city can enable them to construct a hybrid rural-urban identity through
a variety of processes, including their engagement with technology. It can also upset the
taken-for-granted rural/urban binaries. Hybridity, then, is not necessarily a normative or
descriptive concept, but an analytical one.
40

Contemporary China: Gender, Class, and Place
Both Homi Bhabha and Stuart Hall discuss the disruption of the notion of a stable
identity as constitutive of modernity. To Hall, this disruption is the result of “four great
decenterings in intellectual life and in Western thought.”
41
As will be elaborated in the
next chapter, contemporary China in recent decades has also experienced a number of
its own contradictions, disjunctures, and “decenterings,” as the radical socialist utopian
vision of Mao Zedong has been replaced by a pragmatic Party leadership that advocates
“socialism with Chinese characteristics.” Egalitarianism, collectivism, and asceticism
have been repudiated in favor of neoliberal market policies that emphasize individual
merit, material wealth, and consumption. The ideological legitimacy of the Communist
Party has been nearly completely undermined, and with it its moral authority, creating a
space where alternate values and lifestyles compete for people’s attention, often within
a mediated realm of representation. As large segments of the population undergo shifts
not only in geographic location or occupation, but also in goals, values, and notions of
morality, they experience profoundly the fluidity of identity that Hall discusses.

23
Chinese anthropologist Liu Xin has called this the “discontinuity in the
personhood of a person” or “the otherness of self,”
42
by which he means “how oneself is
able to become its Other—not in the sense of changing one’s profession or job but in
the sense that the character of a person may change entirely within a short period of
time—for example, in a few years.”
43
To exemplify such radical internal change “to the
constitution of self as an ethical subject,”
44
he presents an ethnographic narrative of the
dealings of private entrepreneurs (including one who was formerly an intellectual, with
a Ph.D. in Marxism and demography), the section chief of a government bureaucracy,
and massage parlor girls (who are migrants) in Beihai in southern coastal China. The
boss and section chief lead their lives seemingly with no other purpose than to secure
the next deal and then confer or indulge in the concomitant favors (including the sexual
services of the girls). They exist in a world of “mobile-phonic space,” of “constancy and
instantness,” with their cell phone always at hand in order to negotiate vaguely
unscrupulous deals and arrange ad hoc meetings.
45
The migrant women in this narrative
are subordinate yet critical – they bridge the gap between bureaucracy and business
through being “the invisible hands” that massage the masculine engines of commerce,
both literally and figuratively.
46
All of these “stock characters” as Liu calls them –
bosses, businessmen, escorts – have experienced rupture of subjectivity and subsequent
anomie, hardly able to distinguish one day from the next. Liu’s point is to present
contemporary China as a place where people have lost a sense of time, of belonging,
and “of direction in the business of being in the world.”
47

I reiterate in detail Liu’s work because it offers a compelling narrative of the
fluidity of identity and the effect on selfhood of the dislocations that characterize post-

24
socialist China.
48
However, I also want to critique it and in so doing argue that to think
about identity necessitates a much deeper consideration of how an individual’s disparate
positioning in terms of gender, socio-economic status, and geographic origin intersect to
render differently their experience of transformation of selfhood. Liu asserts that “the
official world is a male world,” yet the xiaojie (escort) is “a means of business
success.”
49
She is a commodity, an essential part of the business transaction and one
that goes beyond the surface meaning of sex, existing in the space between the official
world and the market. As such, Liu states that the relationship between the male
entrepreneurs and the escorts is a symmetrical one.
50

Clearly, a migrant woman, whether employed as an escort or in the low-level
service sector as a waitress or vendor, does not occupy a similar position as those she
serves or to whom she is employed, no matter how great her significance in the
interstitial realm of economic transactions. Whether she occupies the same “mobile-
phonic” space as they do is also questionable. Her gender, her experience of migration,
and her particular occupation are only some of the experiences that shape her
subjectivity, and shape it differently than her male counterparts. Thus, theorizing
identity – and its connection to technology usage – also means attending to the multiple
aspects of identity that are always at play to a greater or lesser extent.

An Intersectional Framework
Intersectionality, as theorized by Kimberlé Crenshaw, offers a framework for
considering the way that gender, race, class, or any other facet of identity interconnect
in shaping identity and experience.
51
More specifically, intersectionality is a means of

25
breaking away from the privileging of one aspect of identity over another in order to
avoid distortions and exclusions. An intersectional framework also takes into
consideration the overlapping of structural, political, and representational dimensions
that often lead to the subordination of women. Intersectionality is more than just a
consideration of the way discrete, static categories of identity interconnect; it is a
framework for understanding how they are always in play, even if at different moments
one might be more significant in shaping experience than another. It thus offers a
methodology for generating knowledge about the multifaceted nature of identity and
women’s experience within specific historical and cultural configurations of discourse
and power.
While China does not share the same legal and individual rights-based tradition as
the U.S, where Crenshaw has used intersectionality as a framework for understanding
racial and gender discrimination, intersectionality has been effectively employed across
geographical and cultural borders, for example in the context of transnational feminism
and movements for women’s human rights at the international level. Within this
context, categories of identity are configured in relation to one another and in relation to
the global inequalities caused by transnational capitalism.
In the previous section I highlighted gender as a central organizing category of
experience, due to the way myriad social discourses and meanings are mapped onto the
physical bodies of men and women. Gender is certainly crucial to female migrant
workers’ positionality in Chinese society as well as their engagement with mobile
phones. However, the terms “migrant” and “worker” reveal the need for an
intersectional framework that also considers how class and place are important in the

26
construction of migrant women’s subjectivity. The significance of the intersection of
gender, class, and place can be demonstrated through unpacking a commonly used
Chinese term for migrant woman – dagongmei.
52

A highly gendered term, dagongmei means “working little sister” or “maiden
worker” and connotes a young, unmarried woman, who, as a younger “sister” has low
status and few rights. As Chinese anthropologist Pun Ngai notes, dagongmei “implies
an inferior working identity inscribed with capitalist labor relations and sexual
relations.”
53
The gendered nature of the term becomes pronounced when one notes that
its counterpart, dagongzai, a common term for male migrant workers, means “workers
laboring for the boss.”
54
Dagongmei is the gender marked term – young migrant women
are “working little sisters” – while young migrant men are simply laborers, or brothers,
but not “little brothers.” Furthermore, according to Ching Kwan Lee, managers and
bosses who employ dagongmei often view them as “like lambs, very pure and
compliant” and merely girls who work “while waiting to be married off.”
55

Beyond gender, the term dagongmei also invokes a low-status labor category.
This “inferior working identity” as noted above by Pun Ngai is clearly evident when
contrasting the term dagongmei (and dagongzai) with the Mao-era term for worker,
gongren. Prior to the economic reforms, the gongren were the highly privileged class of
urban workers, the “masters” of the nation employed in state or collective enterprises
and as such entitled to numerous life-long social welfare benefits. In contrast, the
dagongmei and dagongzai have minimal rights and virtually no job security. They thus
represent a class of workers indicative of a capitalist market that extracts surplus
labor.
56
As China has joined the global market, migrant workers, as always temporary

27
workers, provide the “flexibility” demanded by late capitalism. In the context of
China’s marketization and globalization, dagongmei emerges as a classificatory strategy
that enables the exploitation of workers in the name of “socialism with Chinese
characteristics” (emphasis added). Such restructuring of labor relations is, according to
Pun, “the subsumption of class analysis in order to hide class positions and social
privileges,” and as such is part of a political strategy designed to support a neoliberal
discourse of open markets and individualism.
57

Finally, dagongmei is not only gendered and classed; she is also “placed.” She is
an unskilled, low paid female worker, and she is also, and must be, from rural China.
For this reason, her situation in the urban environment greatly differs from a woman
who is a city resident. Even if they happen to hold the same job, which is extremely
rare, their positionality in asymmetrical networks of power and opportunity means they
will experience the city and their employment very differently. I will explore the origins
and consequences of this urban-rural divide more fully in chapter two. Here I only wish
to point out that in contemporary China, because development policies since the mid-
eighties have focused on the eastern coastal regions and large urban centers, the
countryside increasingly has been positioned as “left behind,” or in Chinese
anthropologist Yan Hairong’s words, “a wasteland of ‘backwardness’ and ‘tradition.’”
58

This teleological view of the city as the vanguard of progress and development is not
unique to China, nor is the urban-rural dichotomy a recent result of post-Mao reforms.
In fact, its roots can be traced long prior to the founding of the People’s Republic.
However, cast in the shadow of Mao’s rhetorical construction of the peasants as
possessing a revolutionary character, the necessity of repudiating Maoist ideology

28
becomes clear. The countryside and peasants, then, become objectified as the backward,
traditional Other against which progress and development can be measured. Such a
blanket assessment places the origin and perpetuation of this “social reality” onto the
geographic domain of the countryside and the mental and physical bodies of its
inhabitants rather than structural and institutional factors that discursively produce and
make real these conditions.
In sum, dagongmei is a subject position produced by structural, cultural, and
social factors that rely on dominant discourses of gender, class, and place. It thus
operates as a form of power to normalize the exploitative conditions faced by migrant
women and their position in the gender and societal hierarchy. However, like all
identity categories, the term dagongmei can never be totally fixed, and though it
constructs migrant women as one singular entity, this does not mean that many women
do not refuse this subject position. Instead, migrant women’s own liminality in the city
potentially creates possibilities for new modes of identity and autonomy, and
increasingly these are linked to technology usage.

Theorizing Technology
If identity is fluid, is crosscut by multiple axes of experience, and is constructed
within a network of power, discourse, and representations, then to look at identity
formation as it is connected to technology necessitates understanding how technology
exists within the social world. Numerous theories have been put forward to try to
account for the way that technologies are integrated into everyday life. It perhaps goes
without saying that I reject the idea of technological determinism, or what Claude

29
Fischer describes as a “‘billiard-ball’ model, in which a technological development rolls
in from the outside and ‘impacts’ elements of society, which in turn ‘impact’ one
another.”
59
In a technologically determinist view, societal change – usually, but not
always in the form of teleological progress – is the result of technological innovation
while human agency is either denied or ignored. On the other hand, social determinism,
the idea that technology is merely instrumental and it is the society and economic
system in which it is used that matters, also lacks analytical complexity, yet for opposite
reasons.
60
Such a belief is not only ahistorical, but also treats technology as an isolated
entity completely separate from society and culture. Both views clearly engage in
reductionism, by placing either technology or society in a vacuum and ignoring
complex interactions between various forces and actors.
While social constructivist views of technology seek to remedy the weaknesses of
determinism by positing that technology, like all artifacts, is socially constructed
through the interaction and negotiation of “relevant social groups,” still many of these
theories fall short. The traditional social shaping of technology (SCOT) approach
emphasizes the developmental process that is characterized by “interpretive flexibility”
as designers, developers, and organized groups of users engage in problems and
solutions to the use of the new technology until a point of closure and stabilization is
realized.
61
Yet this theory tends to focus on the planning and introduction phases, and as
originally conceived pays too little attention to what users actually do with the
technology they appropriate. It also only minimally accounts for issues of gender, race,
class, and power in the closure process.
62

30
Technological Culture
To try to account for the complex and interwoven relationship between culture
and technology as well as the myriad forces and actors involved, Jennifer Daryl Slack
and J. Macgregor Wise draw on cultural studies theorists, including Stuart Hall and
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, to formulate their notion “technological culture.”
Starting with Raymond Williams’ proposition that culture, as “a whole way of life” is
also “ordinary,” they suggest that technology, as an artifact of culture, is also an integral
part of culture and not something separate from it.
63
To capture the fact of technology as
not just a bounded “thing” but as existing within and interdependent with a number of
“energies, activities, interpenetrations, and investments,” they employ the theoretical
concepts of articulation and assemblage.
64

As Stuart Hall defines it, an articulation is “the form of the connection that can
make a unity of two different elements, under certain conditions. It is a linkage which is
not necessary, determined, absolute and essential for all time.”
65
The theory of
articulation draws attention to myriad connections between distinct elements –
ideologies, social groups, practices – that appear to create a unified discourse. However,
articulations are always contingent upon a range of factors in a specific historical
conjuncture. The elements articulated can never be assumed to have a necessary
correspondence (they could be quite different), yet their unity is also not completely
random.
66
According to Slack, a good cultural study then, no matter what its topic, must
“map the context,” not only to locate a phenomenon within a certain context, but also to
understand what distinct phenomena make this context what it is.
67
In other words, “the
context is not something out there, within which practices occur or which influence the

31
development of practices. Rather, identities, practices, and effects generally, constitute
the very context within which they are practices, identities or effects” (emphasis in
original).
68
This context, or “web” of articulations, is what makes up an assemblage.
69

In thinking about technology as articulation and assemblage, Slack and Wise
argue that just as culture is made up of a range of articulations that are both coherent
and contradictory and that allow for certain possibilities and foreclose others,
technologies also are developed, employed, and have effects within a particular
assemblage. This then leads to new articulations emerging within a revised assemblage.
Technologies, as situated within relations and connections, are also articulations; at the
same time, since they consist of “webs of corresponding, noncorresponding, and
contradictory articulations” they are also assemblages.
70
Thus, Slack and Wise contend
that technologies should be thought of as “articulations among the physical
arrangements of matter,” or what is typically referred to as a technological object, and a
variety of “practices, representations, experiences, and affects,” which always exist in
relations of contingency (emphasis in original).
71

In the case of a mobile phone, there is the actual physical object as well as its
articulated elements, including ideas (freedom, progress), practices (calling, texting)
and affect (modern, cool, annoying); how these take a particular dynamic form, or
constellation, constitutes its assemblage. The assemblage of the mobile phone will thus
include human and non-human bodies, actions, feelings, and statements. Mapping the
territory of this mobile phone assemblage does not mean looking at the mobile phone
itself, but to the flow of relationships within which it is given meaning as well as its
power to “assemble specific bodies, passions, and representations in particular ways.”
72

32
Such a perspective in its very formulation considers issues of power, identity, and
agency.
Extending the Social Shaping of Technology
While Slack and Wise’s notion of technological culture is helpful for thinking
about the way that technology is not separate from culture and that it is always
embedded in myriad social discourses, practices, and relationships that are not
predetermined but contingent, it is also a bit abstract. To understand the complex way
that technology is embedded in social practices and given meaning, what is needed is a
way to make the concepts of articulation and assemblage more practical through a
theory that takes into account the flexible and polysemic nature of technology, its
ideological underpinnings, the contingent and indeterminate way that technological
devices come to have meaning, and the mutual shaping done by various social actors
and forces, all of which operate within a system of cultural practices, values, and norms.
In “Extending the Social Shaping of Technology,” Hughie Mackay and Gareth
Gillespie attempt to link key aspects of the social shaping of technology literature with
the theoretical and methodological concerns of cultural studies of media and media
audiences (the active audience, issues of power and ideology, modes of decoding,
articulation, etc).
73
They attend to three distinct (yet not discrete or necessarily
sequential) spheres in analyzing a technology: how designers/producers encode a
technology with functional and symbolic uses and meanings within the existing
ideologies (of gender, age, nation, etc.) of a society; how marketers and advertisers play
an important role through socially constructing demand and disseminating discursive
constructions of technology (which embody economic as well as ideological interests)

33
that can be accepted or rejected by consumers; and how users actively appropriate
technologies in a variety of manners within specific social and cultural contexts.
In their model, technology is not already “closed” once it reaches users, nor is it
open to limitless interpretations and uses; rather, it contains flexibility within certain
parameters. As they state:
People may reject technologies, redefine their functional purpose,
customize, or even invest idiosyncratic symbolic meanings in them.
Indeed they may redefine a technology in a way that defies its original,
designed and intended purpose. Thus the appropriation of technology is an
integral part of its social shaping…. However, the appropriation of a
technology cannot be entirely separated from its design and development:
technologies are designed for particular purposes.
74

Drawing on the work of Stuart Hall and David Morley, specifically the notion of the
encoding and decoding of texts, they note that just as media texts may have a preferred
reading, so too, technologies may have within them preferred meanings as well as
modes of deployment. Such encodings are often reinforced through advertising.
Nonetheless, users may reject such preferred forms and exercise creativity in their
appropriating (or decoding) of a technology; thus, one type of meaning or usage is
never inevitable or fixed even though it takes place within the limits of the physical,
material, and technical properties of the artifact. In other words, there is “freedom
within constraint.”
75

As part of their analysis of appropriation, Mackay and Gillespie also recognize the
importance attached to the symbolic meaning of cultural artifacts, including
technological objects. In their words, “The subjective, social appropriation of a
technology is thus one key element of a technology – not just how it is used, but the

34
meaning that use has for the user: a technology is not merely a physical object, it carries
meanings.”
76
Citing cultural theorists and cultural anthropologists including Jean
Baudrillard and Daniel Miller, their model acknowledges that cultural objects are signs
that signify taste, status, and, of utmost significance to this project, identity.
Technological objects, then, hold not just an instrumental value, but are deeply
implicated in the construction of identity and expressions of the self. Usage of
technological artifacts involves not only “the consumption of meanings,” but also “the
production of meanings by the consumer.”
77
Such production of meaning necessarily
takes place within specific social, political, and ideological conditions, and is not
inherent in the technological object. A final part of this model, though mentioned only
in passing, is that it must include notions of gender, class, geographical, and
generational context. In sum, consumption and adoption of a technology must be seen
as a continuing, co-constitutive process of social and discursive interaction among
myriad actors within a particular social, cultural, and historical context.

The Social Shaping of the Mobile Phone: Communication as Transmission and Ritual
Some of the best scholarship within the burgeoning field of mobile phone research
has taken an approach that is similar to MacKay and Gillespie’s. Though not
referencing their model explicitly, these studies draw upon a revised formulation of the
social construction of technology that pays more attention to the mutual shaping of
technology and society. Describing this approach, Mizuko Ito, who with her colleagues
at Keio University in Tokyo did some of the earliest studies on mobile phone
appropriation, notes that such studies “posit that technologies are both constructive of

35
and constructed by historical, social, and cultural contexts, and they argue against the
analytic separation of the social and technical.”
78
As to her own philosophy she states,
“Technologies are objectifications of particular cultures and social relationships, and in
turn, are incorporated into the stream of social and cultural evolution.”
79

Many mobile phone studies have also focused on the symbolic and ritual meaning
of the cell phone, and in this regard they recall James Carrey’s seminal essay, “A
Cultural Approach to Communication,” though, again, most do not reference Carey
explicitly.
80
In this article, Carey discusses two ways of viewing communication – as
either transmission or ritual. The transmission model – the more common approach –
conceives of communication as a process in which messages are sent and delivered
across space for purposes of information or control.
81
Communication as ritual,
however, is connected to notions of community and belonging. In Carey’s words, “A
ritual view of communication is directed not toward the extension of messages in space
but toward the maintenance of society in time; not the act of imparting information but
the representation of shared beliefs.”
82
To Carey, communication is “a symbolic process
whereby reality is produced, maintained, repaired, and transformed.”
83

Mobile phones, as transmission tools, are indeed the latest in a series of
technological devices that allow for greater ease in sending information across time and
space to physically distant others. As the early AirTouch (now Verizon) wireless ads
proclaimed, cell phones allow for “anytime, anywhere” communication. Yet, equally
significant is the way cell phones, as “symbols of” reality, have come to represent
everything from personal identity to group solidarity, especially among youth
populations. As “symbols for” these same processes, they “create the very reality they

36
present.”
84
In other words, if all of one’s peers have a mobile phone and this signifies
connection (literally and figuratively) to the group, then a cell phone becomes
constitutive of group belonging and identity.
In the following discussion, I summarize some of the major findings regarding
mobile phone use and youth. As mentioned earlier, much of this research has been
conducted among relatively affluent high school and college students in their late teens
and early twenties in Northern and Western Europe and Japan, where mobile telephony
advanced rather early and quickly. Overall, such research locates the mobile phone as a
significant part of users’ lives, both for functional and expressive reasons. Many
connections have been found between mobile phones and identity, broadly conceived.
For analytical purposes, I organize the findings into the following categories: the cell
phone’s connection to the physical self and self-presentation, fashion/style, social
networks, autonomy, gender, and time/space relations.
The Physical Self and Self-Presentation
In much research on mobile phones, particularly studies carried out among youth
populations, connections between the phone and the physical body appear to be quite
salient. Setting aside the deterministic tone of his proclamation, it appears in fact that
Marshall McLuhan’s notion of technology as an extension of the self has become true
for many mobile phone users.
85
For example, young people in Finland refer to their
mobile phones by words meaning “an extension of the hand” while teens in Japan say
they are blind without their mobile phone.
86
According to Mizuko Ito, even the
Japanese term, keitai, positions the phone not as “a new technical capability or freedom
of motion” but as “a snug and intimate technosocial tethering, a personal device

37
supporting communications that are a constant, lightweight, and mundane presence in
everyday life.”
87
The Chinese word, shouji, or “handset,” also connotes a greater
connection between user and phone than does “cell phone,” a term that references the
technology rather than a physical connection.
In addition to being felt to be part of the self, cell phones are also important in the
presentation of the self. It has become commonplace for mobile phones to display
personalized touches such as pictures, individualized ringtones, and stickers which
convey a symbolic meaning beyond the functionality of the phone. This is particularly
true across Asia, especially among young women.
88
In fact, some girls feel that losing a
phone is more traumatic than losing a boyfriend.
89
Rich Ling and Birgitte Yttri found
that “old” (over two years), large, or “ugly” handsets are cause for embarrassment; even
so, the phone must not be shown off (by having the most exclusive one) or displayed
too obviously.
90
Similarly, Kris Cohen and Nina Wakeford’s study revealed that mobile
technologies are closely linked to self display, self perception, and identity, and thus
“changes to mobility [and mobile devices] entail complex changes to oneself.”
91

Mobile phones also affect identity, as they can become status symbols, a gauge for
one’s popularity via the number of messages one receives and names in one’s address
book, and markers of in-group/out-group boundaries.
92
Nicola Green’s fieldwork in the
United Kingdom showed that among teens mobile phones were a means to “perform
identity” and “to constitute and accomplish social solidarities and differences, both
among themselves, and between themselves and other social groups.”
93
Dawn Nafus
and Karina Tracey found that in England among those under 30, the mobile phone, in
both its discursive and actual use, paralleled notions of constructing an autonomous self

38
as distinct from others.
94
In China, both migrant workers in southern factories and “hip”
urban youth in Beijing voiced similar connections between owning a mobile phone and
perceived social status or maintenance of “face.”
95
Perhaps Claire Lobet-Maris sums up
the connection between mobile phones and identity best in her statement about Belgian
teens: “For young people, the mobile phone is not only a practical object with which
one communicates but also an object invested with a high degree of symbolic
significance and a large factor in the constitution of one’s identity.”
96

Fashion/Style
Though fashion is most often associated with trends, the line between fashion and
identity can become rather blurred, as individuals adhere to certain fashions that align
with their personality and taste, and as fashion can serve to distinguish certain groups
from others (e.g. preppie versus punk fashion). A visit to Nokia or Motorola’s website
reveals that the cell phone industry has aggressively pursued the connection between
phone and fashion. For example, not long ago Nokia had a line of cell phones that the
company proclaimed were “wearable art and the ultimate objects of desire.”
97
Many
users have also linked cell phones with fashion. Especially among teens, particular
models, colors, ringtones, and wallpaper not only serve as an expression of personal
identity but also convey a certain style. Rich Ling has written extensively on this
connection between fashion and mobile phones among Norwegian teens. In one of his
studies, his interviewees described phones as a “fashion thing” and a way to distinguish
whether someone is “in” or not. One subject said, “Mobiles have become trendy and
hip. The more extreme your mobile, the cooler you are.”
98
Interestingly, Ling found that
views on the appropriate display of mobile phones changed over time. In the period

39
before widespread adoption, exhibiting one’s phone in general was seen as tacky or
vulgar, while after widespread adoption, display was no longer an issue (although
wearing one’s phone on one’s belt was roundly condemned); rather, type and style of
phone became more important as well as size, color, functionalities, and accessories.
99

James Katz and Satomi Sugiyama have called a cell phone “a miniature aesthetic
statement about its owner.”
100
In their poll conducted among university students, over
50 percent agreed that their cell phone “should look cool,” and over half of these same
responders said they noticed how fashionable their friends’ phones were. This study
also revealed that those who were early adopters of mobile phones were more
concerned about style. Howard Rheingold as well has noted the important fashion
dimension of mobile phones and the possibilities for the disruption of conventional
social codes “when a high-tech communication device with complex features (rather
than a scarf or cosmetic) is the ‘trendy object,’ and when the fashion object itself can be
used as a medium for propagating fashions.”
101
And Leopoldina Fortunati has traced the
success of the mobile phone in Italy in part to perceptions of it as a “necessary
accessory” in line with the “Italian ‘beautiful tradition’ and passion for aesthetic
taste.”
102
In Green’s study of British youth cited above, especially among younger
teens, their “discussion of styles and features often took place with reference to current
advertising,” and particular brands, features, and rarity of the mobile phone raised the
status of its owner.
103

Social Networks
Clearly new communication technologies such as mobile phones contain an
expansionary logic in their very design. Thus, it is no surprise that several scholars have

40
sought to find a connection between mobile phones and social capital, roughly defined
as the breadth and quality of a person’s social relations.
104
Much research has focused
upon the way the cell phone allows for nurturing personal ties through “social
grooming”
105
and for reinforcing already existing social networks.
106
For example, Truls
Erik Johnsen found that Norwegian teens use “meaningless yet necessary chat,” which
lacks substance but is nonetheless important for expressive reasons, as well as “digital
gift giving” through exchanging jokes, short phrases, and animation as a means of
“social glue.”
107
Alex Taylor and Richard Harper have also shown how text messaging,
as a form of “gifting,” helps mediate teens’ social relationships.
108

Ling and Yttri have coined the term “hyper-coordination” for the way mobile
phones are used “for emotional and social communication,” particularly through
chatting and sending short text messages that foster group integration.
109
Hyper-
coordination also includes in-group consensus about “the proper forms of self-
presentation vis-à-vis the mobile telephone,” including which type of phone is deemed
appropriate, how it is carried, and how and where it is used.
110
As with Johnson’s study,
the expressive functions of the mobile phone – to send chain text messages, notes,
jokes, and even a type of haiku – reinforce connection with peers and serve as a “meta-
content; that is, the receiver is in the thoughts of the sender.”
111
Mizuko Ito and Daisuke
Okabe, researching in Japan, have termed the way close friends or intimates use mobile
phones to maintain regular accessibility and connection “ambient virtual co-
presence.”
112
Many other studies among young people in diverse locations have found
similar results.
113

41
For young migrant workers in factories in southern China, the mobile phone has
been shown to be important for them to maintain friendships and make new
connections.
114
Though not researching among youth per se, Heather Horst and Daniel
Miller found in their ethnographic study of low-income Jamaicans that the cell phone is
crucial for what is called “link-up,” or networking and establishing connections, often in
order to rely on these contacts in the future for everything from finding a job, to
borrowing money, to establishing a sexual relationship.
115

Autonomy
The mobile phone has also frequently been linked to notions of personal
autonomy and freedom. Perhaps the greatest feeling of autonomy as it relates to cell
phones has been experienced by teens because mobile phones allow them to
communicate with peers away from any parental supervision. In particular, text
messaging is seen as a unique form and style of communication that inhibits adult
monitoring; at the same time, parents exploit the fact that kids constantly check their
messages in order to keep tabs on them.
116
This form of “safe autonomy” has been
noted by several researchers and shows that while the cell phone might break some
traditional family ties, it simultaneously maintains them.
117
Though the mobile phone
allows teens to forge social bonds apart from adults, mobiles have at the same time been
called an extension of the umbilical cord or a digital leash. In numerous studies, parents
have said they bought a mobile phone for their children in order to stay in touch and to
feel more secure about their children’s well being; children also say the phone makes
them feel safer.
118
Yet, while parents exercise some form of control over their children
via a cell phone, children simultaneously gain a significant, even though limited,

42
amount of independence. Through the privacy afforded by the mobile phone and the
way that text messages are often indecipherable to many adults, teens can build a
private universe beyond the realm of parental supervision.
Aside from parent-child relationships, the mobile phone has frequently been
linked to broader notions of personal autonomy and freedom. Users are free of the
constraints of traditional landline phones and also are “liberated” from the former divide
between public and private space. Mobile devices also break down traditional morés
concerning everything from appropriate topics of public conversation to dating and sex.
For example, a phenomenon called “toothing” allows users with Bluetooth enabled
phones to set up anonymous sexual encounters. “Sex messaging,” or text messaging as
a means of hooking up with a date or engaging in foreplay even while in a public space
has also become a popular trend for some.
119
Not that there weren’t already sufficient
means for anonymous sexual encounters in the days before mobile phones, but the
personal nature of wireless devices allows for greater autonomy and privacy in pursuing
such activities.
Gender
As Cynthia Cockburn has aptly stated, technology “cannot be fully understood
without reference to gender.”
120
If we just look at statistics of mobile phone ownership,
many studies show relative parity of ownership among males and females in a number
of countries.
121
It would be tempting, then, to assume a mobile phone is not a gendered
artifact. However, gender differences have been observed in both instrumental and
symbolic uses of mobile phones, though with conflicting conclusions. According to
Virpi Oksman and Pirjo Rautiainen, Finnish boys are more likely than girls to keep up

43
with new cell phone innovations. Also, while boys view cell phones as a way to control
their environment, girls focus more on the “interactive and aesthetic side of
communication technology.”
122
In further research, Oksman and Rautiainen noticed that
boys were more likely to display their phones so they would be visible while girls
carried them in a purse or pocket.
123
Researching in Norway, Berit Skog also found that
ninth grade boys emphasized functionality more than girls, while girls stressed design,
color, and ringtones as well as expressive/social aspects of mobile phones.
124
Still, both
sexes valued the communicative function of the phone.
In a multi-nation study, Sadie Plant observed gender differences in the public
display of cell phones. In interviews, American women said their male peers were more
apt to use their phones as “symbols of status or even virility.”
125
In London, some men
stated that if another man in their presence had a pricier or more technologically
advanced phone, they would feel self conscious about showing their own phone. When
Plant observed male and female couples, males were more often seen displaying their
phone, yet lone women often had their phone on the table, sometimes to ward off
unwanted attention by men.
Other researchers, however, have found that it is the discourses of mobile phones
rather than the actual practices that manifest gender differences. In a study in Israel,
Dafna Lemish and Akiba Cohen interviewed men and women who characterized the
role of the mobile phone in their lives in very gendered language, yet their actual
practices did not manifest such differences. Instead, the adoption of mobile phones
seemed to blur the traditional gendered discrepancies in technology use.
126
Similar
findings were reported in Norway, where variations were not so much in usage as in

44
descriptions of usage by males and females.
127
In the U.S., Cingular (now AT&T) found
that men actually made more phone calls than women, while women used the gaming
feature on their mobiles more, in both cases reversing gender stereotypes about phone
and technology use.
128
A more recent study found that young adult men were more
concerned than women with style and status obtained via their mobile phone.
129

However, in certain Asian countries, particularly Japan, a culture of cute (kawaii) has
developed around girls’ decorating of their mobile phones.
Time and Space
The explosion of new technologies that allow for ubiquitous, simultaneous, and
dislodged communication has meant that time and place have changed meaning: in all
aspects of life there is both an increasing “disassociation between spatial proximity and
the performance of everyday life’s functions” as well as the blending of tenses as time
is compressed to the fullest extent possible.
130
The result is a world characterized by
what Manuel Castells calls the “space of flows” and “timeless time.” The former is “the
material organization of time-sharing social practices that work through flows;” its
structure and significance is not dependent on any place but instead on the relationships
built in and around networks which define the content of communication flows.
131

Timeless time is the “de-sequencing of social action, either by time compression or by
random ordering of the sequence” of activities.
132

Mobile phones especially lend themselves to the dislodging of space and the
blurring of time, as they allow for simultaneous interaction at great distances at any
place and time. They also change our referent as to where we are since the flow of
communication rather than the particular place defines the interaction. Places do not

45
disappear, “but their logic and their meaning become absorbed in the network.”
133

Similarly, because space shapes time, one effect is that downtime is no longer
downtime; instead, it is full of chatter, texting, or play. Likewise, notions of time are
softened, as are rigid distinctions between work and leisure, for better or worse. This is
made possible due to the desequencing of activities and the ubiquity of communication
allowed by “perpetual contact.”
Not everyone sees these changes as positive. In one study, several people
surveyed said that a possible effect of cell phones was that people would not be able to
handle the challenges of being alone or they would miss the opportunities for
contemplation that “dead” or down time afford.
134
Others have sounded alarms due to
the inappropriate blurring of private and public spaces afforded by mobile phones since
they can be used nearly anywhere to talk about anything. However, it seems apparent
that after an initial period of adjustment, rules of etiquette for cell phone usage – for
example in restaurants or on public transportation – do emerge.
135
Another fear has been
that cell phones will add to the fragmentation and extreme individuation already found
in modern society. Kenneth Gergen has theorized the increase of “absent presence” due
to “the growing domain of diverted or divided consciousness” brought about by
communication technologies (be it a Walkman, iPod, or cell phone) that “insinuate
themselves into the world of full presence – the world in which one is otherwise
absorbed and constituted by the immediacy of concrete, face-to-face relationships.”
136

Surprisingly, he does not view the cell phone as contributing to fragmentation but to the
strengthening of local ties due to its ability to provide instant and constant access of
people to each other, no matter where they are.

46
Others have observed the reality of space-time compression in mobile phone
usage in everyday life. Ling and Yttri have noted a new form of interaction they call
“micro-coordination,” or “nuanced, instrumental coordination,” which allows for more
flexible time scheduling and transportation arrangements.
137
Time is softened in that
trips can be redirected, lateness can be signaled, and plans can be modified midstream.
Shin Dong Kim, researching in Korea, calls the mobile phone an “instrument of magical
power” for the way it enables people to change plans and social engagements instantly
and spontaneously.
138
Similarly, Ito observed the fluidity with which youth arrange
social gatherings, and how constant connectivity regardless of place has lead to
diminishing feelings of urban anonymity.
139

As Anthony Townsend sums up, particularly in urban areas, a new lifestyle has
been made possible by mobile communications, which “broke the flow of information
away from the scheduling necessary to ensure coordination of journeys. Information
could be updated in real-time, negating the need to plan anything. Accessibility became
more important than mobility.”
140
Still, time and space have not disappeared. The
question “Where are you?” is frequently asked when first taking a call on a cell phone
not because the exact location of one’s interlocutor is important but because knowing
the context shapes the conversation that is occurring through a locationless device.
141

For this reason, in Japan it has now become customary for one to first send a text
message before making a voice call in order to ensure that one is where one can talk.
142

These studies show that the mobile phone has become a nearly indispensable
artifact in the lives of youth populations in various cultures. At the most basic level, it

47
has a “transmission” purpose as it is used to communicate messages across space.
Equally, or perhaps more important, however, is the way that this “personal, portable”
device serves a “ritual” function. In a short time span, the cell phone has become a key
tool for young people’s identity construction and autonomy vis-à-vis parents and other
authority figures. Mobile phones are also used to establish relationships, to strengthen
existing social networks, and to express affection or feelings, not only overtly but also
through the exchange of seemingly meaningless yet socially significant messages that
signal virtual co-presence.
Though some scholars have posited the possibility of universal meanings and uses
of cell phones,
143
nearly all of the ethnographic mobile phone research cited above is
concerned with usage by primarily middle class, educated youth in developed countries.
In addition, with few exceptions, most of these studies have only paid minimal attention
to issues of power.
144
Thus, we must be necessarily wary of mapping primarily western-
based (and Japanese) “social facts” about mobile phone use onto a culture and
population vastly different from the subjects of those studies. While mobile phone
research from the outset has been international in scope, and clearly there are broad
meanings and practices shared by mobile phone users, different cultural, structural, and
institutional factors influence the particular interaction of technology and those who use
it in specific contexts. I now turn to the question posed earlier in the introduction to this
dissertation: what about mobile phone use by these youths’ more economically and/or
socially marginalized peers, who have different constraints on their personal agency and
autonomy?

48
Research Objective
This study is situated within the intersecting forces of globalization, migration,
and the widespread diffusion of mobile technologies in everyday life. The primary
focus of this research is how young rural-to-urban migrant women working in the low-
level service sector in Beijing engage with cell phones to negotiate their identity and
create meaning in relation to themselves and others in the city. As discussed earlier, the
fluidity of identity implies that life events such as migration, resettlement into an urban
environment, and entry into the labor market will transform identity. This research asks
how a personal, portable communication device such as the cell phone is integrated into
these processes and how existing discourses of gender, class, and place are constitutive
of migrant women’s understanding and usage of cell phones. In other words, how does
migrant women’s positionality shape their engagement with mobile phones?
In the context of China’s discourses of modernity and development, this study also
asks what symbolic meanings are articulated to mobile phones and whether cell phones
are part of migrant women’s forming a hybrid rural-urban identity. In addition, what
social and cultural spaces are opened up through cell phones and how are they used for
establishing and maintaining various relationships? Another key question is whether
cell phones enable migrant women to exercise autonomy vis-à-vis authority figures
such as parents and employers. Finally, given the unequal power relations in which
migrant women are positioned within China’s socio-cultural order, this research
examines whether certain uses of mobile phones by both migrant women and their
employers might reify migrant women’s marginal position.

49
Methodology
In order to understand how rural women in Beijing engage with mobile phones in
their everyday lives, this study used immersive, ethnographic methods. The goal was to
“map the context,” or to generate what Clifford Geertz calls a “thick description” –
where a “mere wink” is never a mere wink, but is part of a whole repertoire of
“inference and implication.”
145
An ethnographic inquiry is designed to generate new
knowledge and is based on a logic of discovery that ideally results in the creation of a
lens through which people can view certain phenomena or see things in a new way.
Rather than verifying theory, it aims to build theory that is persuasive and convincing.
This research was conducted during ten months of fieldwork in Beijing that was
first begun during July 2005 and primarily carried out from September 2006 to June
2007. The participants in the study were migrant women, as well as a small number of
migrant men, who ranged in age from 16 to 26 years old, although most were between
18 and 23. They had migrated to Beijing after finishing at least some middle school (a
few had finished high school), and they came mostly from villages though some were
from small towns. They were employed primarily in marketplaces, restaurants, and hair
salons. A few worked as service staff in government-owned companies. Data were
gathered through participant observation, interviews, and a set of mobile phone
diaries.
146
Before outlining the specifics of the fieldwork, it is first necessary to say a
few words about ethnography as methodology.
The Problem with Ethnography
By now it perhaps goes without saying that using the term “ethnography” raises
questions about the problematic nature of cultural representation. Historically,

50
ethnography, largely associated with anthropology, implied going to a distant (usually
exotic) locale to study a foreign culture, which was thought to be bounded, unique, and
rooted in universal structures (the family, religion, etc.). Through using purportedly
“scientific” methods devised by western (predominantly male) academics, it was
assumed that this culture could be rendered transparent and fully knowable.
147
Never
mind that some early twentieth century anthropologists did not necessarily have a strong
command of the language of the culture they were studying or that they rarely viewed
their informants as experts or gave them a voice in the final narrative. A notion of
fieldwork driven by the experience and observations of a “qualified author” grounded in
positivist principles was thought to guarantee explanation of “exotic peoples.”
148

The epistemological and methodological bases of ethnography came under attack
with the advent of post-structural and post-colonial interventions that, along with
questioning the entire notion of objective truth, also critiqued the ethnographer who
presumed to speak with “automatic authority for others defined as unable to speak for
themselves.”
149
This critique also drew attention to ethnography’s propensity for
exclusion and for othering those who are the objects of its study, as well as its
association with colonialism and imperialism. Such a critique of the “ethnographic
gaze”
150
led to a “crisis” not only in anthropology, but also to a reassessment of
ethnography as a method. In the introduction to the volume most representative of this
reassessment, Writing Culture, James Clifford pointed to the “historical predicament of
ethnography, the fact that it is always caught in the invention, not the representation, of
cultures.”
151
He added that in ethnography there are always exclusions, unintentional

51
distortions, the inevitable speaking for the other, and the imposition of meaning. In
short, ethnography “enacts power relations” that are invariably unequal.
152

For this reason, according to Clifford, there must be a recognition that
ethnographic “truths are thus inherently partial—committed and incomplete” (emphasis
in original).
153
Such partiality does not mean “falsehood” or merely the opposite of fact;
instead, it suggests that all historical truths are partial in the “ways they are systematic
and exclusive.”
154
Several years prior to Clifford’s pronouncement, Geertz had stated,
“what we call data are really our own constructions of other people’s constructions of
what they and their compatriots are up to;” as such, they are “fictions, in the sense that
they are ‘something made,’ ‘something fashioned,’” which, again, does not mean they
are false.
155
In this regard, Clifford and Geertz were articulating the larger position
already emanating from post-structuralism, namely the impossibility of finding
universal Truth.
Despite its problematics, the project of ethnography was not abandoned; instead,
the “new ethnography” was to be self-reflexive and based on dialogue instead of
“visualism” (e.g. observation and description).
156
It also emphasized letting the subjects
of the fieldwork speak; in other words, seeing them as co-authors in the final product of
the research.
157
Ironically, however, the critique and supposedly new path forged in the
volume Writing Culture enacted the very exclusions and silences it was purportedly
rectifying by including only one female scholar (a literary critic). The sad (and to some,
infuriating) irony of this omission was certainly not lost on feminist ethnographers, who
viewed it as one more confirmation of the way ethnographic authority is grounded in a

52
predominantly white “masculine subjectivity” and a “male gaze” that relegates those
others – women, people of color – to the margins in spite of itself.
158

However, if ethnography is by its very nature exclusionary and othering, and
always a form of symbolic violence, can a feminist ethnography be any different? Some
feminists have certainly sought to posit a uniquely feminist ethnography as the basis for
understanding women’s lives. In such a view, the supposedly female qualities of
empathy and intuition and women’s propensity to focus on the interpersonal and
experiential become the basis for a methodology that is able to avoid the unequal power
relations, exploitation, and false objectivity associated with traditional research
methods.
159
This view of a feminist ethnography aligns with feminist standpoint theory,
which argues that women, as a subordinate group, have a privileged position from
which to understand male supremacy and to critique androcentric structures and
ideologies embedded in patriarchy and capitalism.
160

Nevertheless, a notion of a distinctly feminist ethnography has two major flaws.
The first is that relying on women’s greater propensity for empathy, feeling, or other
“feminine” qualities quickly leads to essentialism, where an inherent female nature
reinstantiates the very binaries and othering that feminist ethnography is supposed to
break down. The second problem is that both this form of feminist ethnography and the
feminist standpoint rely on women’s experience and their articulation of this experience
to reach certain truths, and they both posit a self-knowing, authentic subject that can
speak the truth of their real situation through language. Early versions of feminist
ethnography often assumed they could be more sensitive to the relations of power in
dealing with their research subjects. Women’s experience, particularly in standpoint

53
theory, is supposed to create truer knowledge because it comes from a marginalized
group that thus has a privileged perspective. This truth is meant to displace biased,
totalizing accounts of history and social relations. In either case, the authenticity of
experience and the ability for reflexivity to prevent bias are presumed. However,
Foucaultian theories of discourse and power trouble these assumptions.
In “Experience,” Joan Scott addresses the problems with relying on experience as
“uncontestable evidence,” particularly to illuminate the lives of marginalized groups.
161

As Scott argues, experience cannot simply be taken at face value; instead, an
investigation of a group’s experience must always include an analysis of how difference
is socially constructed and constituted by discourse, and how discourses function to
produce experience in specific, historical conjunctures. It means not looking at the
products of difference but at the way power operates to produce subjects through
discourse. Thus, Scott maintains the need “to understand the operations of the complex
and changing discursive processes by which identities are ascribed, resisted, or
embraced and which processes themselves are unremarked.”
162

Such an assertion does not deny human agency; indeed, Scott insists that people
do have agency. However, this agency is never fully free but will be enabled or
constrained by discourse. Such an understanding of experience connects back to
Alcoff’s notion of positionality, recognizing as it does that experience does not
constitute a form of authenticity but rather evolves from a network of power relations
and discourses. Acknowledging the socially constructed nature of experience means we
can still maintain it as a mode for understanding. As Ann Gray states, experience is “an

54
important epistemological category” because it is the primary way we know our own
and others’ ways of being in the world.
163

Reconciling Ethnography and “Experience”
An understanding of the problems inherent in ethnography and the workings of
power and discourse in producing experience underscore the methodology used in this
study in several ways. This study is grounded in migrant women’s articulation of their
lived experience as it relates to their use of mobile phones. It also depends on my
contact with them as well as my interpretation of our interactions. Like all experience,
this body of experience is socially constructed and produced by discourse. I make no
claim that as a marginalized group migrant women somehow have access to a more
authentic experience based on their particular standpoint. At the same time, a
recognition of the socially constructed nature of experience enables deeper questions
about the way knowledge is produced and whose knowledge gets to count. It also
suggests that attending to the variety of migrant women’s experiences can serve to
disrupt any notion of a unified, stable “migrant woman.”
164
Ann Gray astutely notes that
“the very recalcitrance of ‘experience’ is … the strongest argument for its retention.”
165

It is a way to tap into people’s understanding of their place in the world, the practices
that anchor (or disrupt) this position, and the feelings and emotions attached to such
practices and positions. At the same time, it acknowledges that, in Geertz’ words,
“cultural analysis is intrinsically incomplete.”
166

In addition to recognizing the problem with experience yet still retaining
experience as research evidence, throughout my fieldwork I also strove for the constant
reflexivity demanded of an ethnographic inquiry that attempts to avoid or at least

55
minimize its potentially marginalizing tendencies. Perhaps the biggest problems that
remain with ethnography are power differentials between researcher and “subjects” as
well as an othering and essentializing of these subjects. My own background as a white,
middle class, American doctoral candidate perhaps could not be further removed from
that of the women in my study, many of whom came from extremely poor families and
often did not have more than a middle-school education (many had less). At the same
time, however, they had intricate knowledge of Chinese culture that I did not
necessarily have.
I can also only hope that my own instances of being “othered” in China gave me
greater empathy to the situation of migrant women in Beijing. During that first trip to
Changchun described in the introduction, I was clearly an outsider – someone who
struggled with language, different customs, strange food, disorientation, and loneliness
(there were no telephones in our dorm and letters to or from the U.S. could take 10 days
or more). At the parks and open markets with friends, crowds would regularly gather to
see what the laowai (foreigner, or literally “esteemed outsider”) were looking at.
Occasionally someone would touch my blonde hair or point at my blue eyes, which
could either be amusing or disconcerting depending on the circumstances. While living
in Beijing in the early nineties though I was not quite such an oddity, there were still
several instances in which my “otherness” was driven home, such as the seemingly
constant desire of vendors in the open markets to cheat the “rich foreigner” and the
frequent shouts by passersby on the streets of “laowai,” or even waiguolao (foreign
devil) when I visited a southern province.

56
Though nowadays in Beijing westerners rarely evoke any of these reactions, these
memories remained with me as I conducted my fieldwork. I do not mean to downplay
my position of privilege compared to the women in my study, who in the city are
treated as outsiders, though in their own country. And certainly our relationships were
framed by issues of class, race, nationality, and unequal access to social and cultural
capital. Yet, for all of these reasons I was also somewhat of an object of curiosity for
them. As Wendy Weiss notes, “There is objectification on both sides, which is part of
the process of understanding begun by defining ourselves first through the opposition of
‘the other.’”
167
This process of understanding proceeds through dialogue, exploration,
and what the Chinese call huxiang bangzhu, or “mutual help.” As much as the women
in my study gave to me – of their time, knowledge, friendship, and even handmade gifts
– I hope I also gave back to them, through helping them with their limited English,
occasionally serving as a translator with customers, taking some of them on first-time
outings to Starbucks or Baskin-Robbins, and, most importantly, showing them respect
and that their lives mattered.
As Julie Bettie points out in the introduction to her study of Mexican-American
and white girls in an American high school, to perform reflexive ethnography means
recognizing “the fact of the power we wield, the power of interpretation. The text is not
simply the result of an even negotiation between ethnographer and subject, because in
the end authority literally remains with the ethnographer, as author of the text.”
168
In
other words, regardless of my desire to let women’s voices speak in this study, and for
them to articulate their own understanding of what mobile phones mean in their lives –
in terms of identity, relationships with others, feelings of agency and autonomy, or

57
subordination – ultimately the final interpretation is mine. Nonetheless, I hope the end
result is what Donna Haraway calls a “joining of partial views.”
169

Feminist ethnography is not “feminist” because it is conducted by women who, as
women, have certain inherent traits. Instead, it is based on an acknowledgment of power
relations, a desire to let silenced voices speak, intersubjectivity between researcher and
participants, and perhaps most crucially, reflexivity.
170
As Elizabeth Bird states in her
study of how different audiences experience various media, “All anthropological
approaches are characterized by constraints; the key is to be flexible, tailor one’s
‘ethnographic encounter’ to a particular situation, and be aware of the possible impact
of methodological choices.”
171
She adds that we must also be “both creative and
reflective about the methodological choices we make,” especially since all
methodologies perform ideological work.
172
Thus, the politics of ethnography cannot be
erased, nor should they be. For it is ethnography’s politics that forces recognition and
negotiation of issues of power and difference, and by extension potential realizations of
social change.
The Fieldwork
Sites
In order to study the mobile phone use of rural-to-urban migrant women in the
low-level service sector, as mentioned earlier I chose three main types of sites:
restaurants, marketplaces, and hair/beauty salons. Three main considerations guided my
selection of these sites. First, the majority of prior ethnographic research involving
female migrants in China has been conducted among workers in southern factories or
with domestic workers.
173
The small number of studies examining the mobile phone use

58
of migrant workers (male and female) has also been carried out among factory workers
in the south (using interviews and focus groups).
174
In order to add to, but not duplicate,
this body of knowledge I chose work sites that employ a large number of migrants yet
have remained relatively unexamined. Another reason, and one that is more important
methodologically, is that a major goal of this study was to see how mobile phones were
integrated into the daily lives of migrant women. The very public nature of these sites
meant that I could observe mobile phone use in natural, everyday contexts. Finally, ease
of access was another crucial concern. Obtaining permission to conduct an ethnography
of a factory would have entailed jumping through numerous bureaucratic hoops;
gaining access to several people’s private homes in order to interact with domestic
workers as they went about their daily tasks would have raised equally difficult hurdles.
Aside from restaurants, marketplaces, and beauty salons, a number of more
“official” locations became important for making connections with migrant women.
The first of these is the Beijing Cultural Development Center for Rural Women
(BCDCRW), which has several programs for both rural and migrant women and also
oversees the Migrant Women’s Club (dagongmei zhi jia) and the Practical Skills
Training Center for Rural Women (PSTCRW). In July 2005 I met Chen Shanshan, a
project officer at BCDCRW, and she served as an invaluable resource through
introducing me to staff at the Center who were very gracious in spending time with me
when I visited there, showing me their website, updating me on various projects, and
discussing the content of the publications of the Center, including Rural Women
magazine (formerly Rural Women Knowing All), the first and only monthly magazine

59
targeted at rural women. Through Chen Shanshan I also gained access to both the
PSTCRW and the Migrant Women’s Club.
The PSTCRW provides a variety of free short-term courses in subjects such as
computer training, hair styling, and waitressing, along with free room and board as well
as job placement for rural women who are selected mostly from impoverished villages
in provinces outside Beijing. During Fall 2006 I went to the school every week and
interacted with a group of 32 young women who were enrolled in a three-month
computer course at the school. I was able to follow their progress from the time of their
arrival, through their training and graduation, and then with half of them, their job
placement in Beijing. This allowed me to gain a better understanding of their transition
from rural to urban life and from being non-users of technology (due to lack of
resources) to gaining technological skills, becoming dagongmei, and, in many cases,
purchasing their first mobile phone.
The Migrant Women’s Club was established in 1996 by urban intellectuals to
provide a “home away from home” for migrant women in Beijing. The Club offers
various types of training, support services, and social networking opportunities for
migrant women (and men) in Beijing. It also produces several publications designed to
educate migrant women about their rights and to build their self-capacity. The Club has
a large number of members; however, because it is fairly well-known in China and
abroad, it tends to be a bit overrun by foreign scholars and activists who use the Club as
a resource for meeting migrant women and conducting research. Many long-term
members have occasionally expressed resentment about this situation, and for this
reason I attended very few of the Club’s activities. However, two of its staff members

60
were nonetheless very supportive of my research and introduced me to select Club
members, invited me to Club activities, and took me to migrant markets and schools in
Beijing.
A final organization that was very important in the course of my fieldwork was
the Culture and Communication Center for Facilitators. Usually known simply as
Facilitator, it was established by Li Tao and Li Zhen in 2003 to serve the migrant
population in Beijing.
175
Like the Migrant Women’s Club it provides rural-to-urban
migrants with a variety of resources and training courses, and it is also a place for
members to go in the evenings to eat dinner and socialize. Shortly after I arrived in
Beijing in September 2006 a Chinese friend introduced me to Li Tao and Li Zhen, and
they agreed to allow me to participate in the Center’s Sunday afternoon activities. These
were usually training sessions on topics ranging from labor laws to medical benefits. I
also attended monthly birthday parties and holiday gatherings. In addition, I volunteered
as an English teacher and taught Friday evening courses in the fall and in the spring. At
Facilitator I was able to interview several migrant workers, and I became friends with
seven women that I saw on a semi-regular basis. I also gained a much better
understanding not only of the legal situation for migrants in Beijing, but also their
feelings about their experience in the city.
Participant Observation
A significant part of this study involved spending a large amount of time at
various research sites interacting with migrant women. Nearly everyday I went to a hair
salon, a restaurant, or a marketplace, and sometimes I went to more than one location
per day. Each type of site required a slightly different approach to gathering data due to

61
the variety of work environments in terms of both job requirements and schedules. I call
this “participant observation” to emphasize that though at times I did only observe at
various locales, more often than not I engaged in conversations with women about their
everyday lives. Much of this conversation was about mobile phone use, and most
women were more than willing to show me some of the text messages they had sent and
received, let me look at pictures in their phones, and allow me to see who was in their
phone address books. We also talked about everything from work to family to
boyfriends to television shows. Many women also asked me questions about the U.S. or
about the English language (nearly all of them had studied English though few of them
could speak more than a few words or sentences).
In Beijing I visited about twenty hair salons, ranging from a tiny, no-frills, two-
woman shop whose patrons were primarily residents in the old alleyway (hutong) in
which it was located, to an upscale, trendy, French-managed salon that drew a largely
foreign clientele from the business and diplomatic communities. I also went to some
beauty salons that only gave foot massages or manicures and pedicures. Most of the
salons where I spent a significant amount of time offered relatively inexpensive services
(e.g. 15 yuan – about $2.00 – for a haircut, 10 yuan for a hair wash and a shoulder
massage) to a range of customers who were mainly Chinese.
176
They were mid-sized
establishments with from six to 18 employees (usually with more women than men), all
of whom were young and from rural areas. Some were crowded with side-by-side and
back-to-back stations and others were a bit more spacious. Almost all of them were
brightly painted inside and often had pictures of young stylish Chinese men and women
(usually movie stars or models) on the walls.

62
The hair salons were perhaps the easiest place to observe and have conversations
with migrant women due to the fact that when they were not busy most women spent
their time at the salon relatively freely. They often chatted, sent text messages, thumbed
through magazines, or did each other’s hair. During my stay in Beijing I frequented five
salons on a regular basis and was able to establish a good rapport with fourteen female
employees as well as a few males. I usually went in the afternoons to chat with the
women and observe how their phone use was integrated into their work lives. I also had
frequent hair washes and shoulder massages, which provided a good way to talk as well
as compensate the women for their time. In these salons I became a regular client, a
participant observer, an informal English tutor, and, with a few women, a friend.
During my stay in Beijing, not surprisingly I visited dozens of dining
establishments as a customer, but compared to the hair salons it was much more
difficult to gather rich ethnographic data in a restaurant environment. For a number of
reasons, not least of which concerned social etiquette, I could not go “behind the
scenes” and observe the interaction that went on in the kitchen, I could not linger at a
table for an extended period of time unless I continued to order food or drinks (a bit
hard to do when one is on one’s own, easier to do when there is a group, which wasn’t
always the case), and with one exception I was not allowed to observe training sessions
or other types of employee-employer meetings. Although I was able to interview
several waitresses – all of whom worked in “common” (putong) or home-style
(jiachang) restaurants, meaning they were average priced and did not serve exotic
dishes – my most extensive participant observation occurred at only three restaurants
where I had connections (guanxi) via Chinese friends. I visited two of these restaurants

63
(where I knew five women) about once a week, usually during lunch or dinner, and
sometimes during the afternoon lull, though not as frequently since employees usually
took a nap at this time. Because the third restaurant was quite a distance from my home,
I went there every two to three weeks to talk to the waitresses I knew and occasionally
to chat with the boss as well.
Beijing has a vast array of shopping venues spread throughout the city, including
large department stores, whole city blocks lined with small clothing stores, and glitzy
shopping malls filled with designer boutiques. There are also several huge marketplaces
located in vast structures with four or five floors, each jammed with row upon row of
stalls occupied by vendors hawking everything from small electronics, to designer
purses and watches, to name brand athletic shoes and clothing (all of it fake). I visited
all of these types of shopping venues on several occasions, but spent extended time at
two small clothing stores and in three different large marketplaces with eight women. In
the migrant enclaves that sit on the outskirts of the city there are also markets, many of
them outdoors. These markets are vastly different from the other markets in terms of the
goods that are sold – cooking utensils, inexpensive, poorly made clothing, produce,
spices – and in terms of the people: all of the customers as well as the vendors (most of
them small entrepreneurs) are migrants. I occasionally went to one of these migrant
markets to chat with two different women who had been introduced to me through a
staff member of the Migrant Women’s Club.
Interviews
In addition to participant observation, I conducted over 70 interviews with rural-
to-urban migrant women. These interviewees included some of the women mentioned at

64
the various sites above, women I met through the different NGOs, and the 32 young
women enrolled at the school. I also conducted interviews with 17 male migrants. Some
interviews were done during work hours and thus were interrupted or cut short, but
about two thirds of the total number of interviews were in-depth and lasted over an
hour. With women I saw frequently, it was easy to follow-up after the initial interview
in order to fill in gaps. In other words, often an interview led to a more long-term
relationship and sometimes vice versa.
Interviews always began with questions about basic demographic and employment
information, which were followed by questions about traditional media and then mobile
phone usage (see Appendix 1). Originally I had intended to ask questions about
computer use and wireless music devices as well, in order to situate women’s mobile
phone use within their whole new communication technology ecology (as indicated on
the interview questionnaire in Appendix 1). However, most women did not use the
Internet or used it so rarely that these questions were most often not used. The same was
the case with portable music players. Interviews were conducted in a semi-structured
fashion, and this meant that often interviews led in directions that were unexpected but
extremely fruitful. When possible, interviews were recorded and then transcribed.
During some early interviews I had a translator accompany me, but I found that this
often broke up the flow of the interview, so eventually I conducted all interviews on my
own.
In addition to interviewing migrant workers, I also interviewed three employers:
two that owned hair salons and one that ran a data-input company. I also conducted

65
interviews with two staff members at the NGOs mentioned earlier as well as with the
director, director of education, and two computer instructors at the PSTCRW.
Mobile Phone Diaries
Towards the end of the research period, I asked seven women and two men that I
knew fairly well to fill out mobile phone diaries. The purpose was for them to document
their mobile phone use for four days over a one-week period. The format of the diaries was
adapted from the work of Mizuko Ito.
177
Participants were instructed to record the date,
time, context, and content of all voice calls, text messages, mobile Internet use, camera use,
file downloading or sending, and game playing during an entire day (see Appendix 2). They
were also asked to document whether there were any problems with the intended use of
their phone (such as poor reception). Once the diaries were collected, translated, and
analyzed, follow-up interviews were conducted to generate deeper insights into what
emerged as key moments of communication and certain trends in usage.
Supplemental Materials
MacKay and Gillespie’s extension of the social shaping of technology emphasizes
that technology appropriation must be understood from a range of perspectives,
including that of designers and advertisers. Though I was unable to interview any
designers or marketers, I gathered a number of print materials on mobile phones to
supplement my fieldwork. These included pamphlets with cell phone and cell phone
service offers, advertising postcards, and newspaper and magazine ads. I also visited
mobile phone shops across the city and spoke with salespeople about the different types
of phones for sale and the perceived clientele for such phones. In addition, I took
numerous photographs of mobile phone ads in Beijing – especially on billboards and on

66
placards at bus stops and in subway stations. I used these materials to understand the
various popular discourses associated with cell phones in Beijing.

Through using a variety of data gathering techniques in several locations and
among a diverse group of migrant women, I sought to accumulate a wide range of uses
and perceptions of mobile phones. As my fieldwork progressed, common themes
emerged in terms of usage patterns, and I was able to adjust my interviews and
conversations accordingly. For example, it soon became apparent that question 14 on
the interview sheet, which asks whether the respondent has a service contract or uses
pre-paid phone cards, was irrelevant since none of the migrants I knew had a service
plan (nor did I). At the same time, there were frequent surprises, such as the manner in
which some women used camera phones. By attending to both the expected, and what
Carlo Ginzberg calls “an interpretive method based on taking marginal and irrelevant
details as clues,” I was able to discover some of the playful ways that women engaged
with their phones as well as the profound importance a mobile phone could have in a
woman’s life.
178

As I analyzed my data, a wide range of socio-techno practices linked especially to
mobile phone use emerged. By socio-techno practices, I mean the ways in which
technology, in this case a cell phone, is integrated into existing social practices and at
the same time opens up new spaces or possibilities for their enactment within the
specific social world and material conditions of users. Such practices may be connected
to identity construction, sociality, and autonomy vis-à-vis other social actors and

67
structures, though others might reinforce or enable dominant-subordinate relationships.
Socio-techno practices are always produced within a particular discursive context.

Overview of the Chapters
The remainder of this dissertation explores how within the processes of China’s
marketization and entry into the global economy, and the concomitant forces of
modernization, migration, and informatization, mobile phones occupy an increasingly
central role in identity construction, individual autonomy, and social networking among
rural-to-urban migrant women in Beijing.
Chapter two focuses on the specific socio-cultural context of contemporary China
at the beginning of the 21
st
century. I discuss the reforms of the post-Mao period, the
urban/rural divide perpetuated by the household registration system (hukou), China’s
discourse of development and modernity, and how these serve to configure rural women
ideologically as an “other” to be reformed and improved. Rural-to-urban migration, the
“consumer revolution,” and the development of China’s telecommunications
infrastructure are explained and highlighted as factors contributing to migrant women’s
positionality. These forces also create spaces of liminality that potentially trouble the
binaries of rural/urban, traditional/modern, and backward/developed. Throughout the
discussion I emphasize how gender ideologies have played a pivotal role in all of these
processes during both the Mao-era planned economy and China’s reform-era embrace
of markets and global capitalism.
In chapter three I situate the mobile phone specifically within China’s quest for
development and modernity. I begin with a discussion of the central tenets of modernity

68
as well as the notion of “other” or “alternative” modernities as a way to get beyond
binaries of East/West and Center/Periphery. I also discuss Foucault’s concepts of power
and discipline, as well as feminist interventions that bring gender into a Foucaultian
analysis. I then argue that for rural-to-urban migrant women, a mobile phone is an
important signifier of modernity and something that distinguishes them from their rural
peers. I also show that socio-techno practices associated with cell phones serve as a
form of both symbolic and cultural capital. In addition, cell phones allow women to
participate in a form of consumer citizenship (or the “comfortable life” promised by the
government) in contrast to the legal and social citizenship they are denied in the city.
Another key point in this chapter is that discourses surrounding mobile phone use align
with notions of gender essentialism that have become prominent in the post-Mao era. In
the final section of the chapter, I discuss how mobile phones bring about new modes of
discipline and normalization.
In chapter four I develop a theory of “immobile mobility,” a socio-techno practice
for overcoming spatial, temporal, and discursive constraints via the cell phone. For
women who work long hours, rarely have time off, and are often separated from friends
outside of colleagues by far distances, a mobile phone becomes a crucial tool for
maintaining social networks in ways that were not possible before. A cell phone also
allows women to expand networks and build guanxi (personal connections) as well as
enrich friendships. In this chapter, I also discuss how immobile mobility is achieved
through migrant women’s creative use of camera phones. A final theme explored is the
way that mobile phones allow for greater autonomy in dating through a mix of

69
traditional and technological. “Immobile mobility” thus allows migrant women to forge
new ties and explore new sexual identities, though within established norms of sociality.
Chapter five discusses mobile phones and labor by examining how migrant
women use cell phones as tools of resistance at work, and, conversely, how employers
utilize mobile phones for purposes of surveillance. I show that while cell phones offer
migrant women a way to express their agency in the workplace through small and
primarily symbolic modes of resistance, employers can use mobile phones to reinforce
traditional, patriarchal relationships. I argue that employers’ use of cell phones as a
method of control and their perception of mobile phones as contributing to migrant
women’s individualization and insubordination reveal that the practical and discursive
construction of any technology is a form of power. Finally, I examine whether mobile
phones can enhance migrant women’s economic opportunities, such as by helping to
increase their income or find a better job.
In the conclusion I tie together the various themes and provide a final analysis of
the role of mobile phones in rural women’s identity construction, sociality, and
autonomy. I avoid an “either/or” empowerment vs. subjugation argument and instead
provide a more nuanced account of the ways that new communication technologies such
as mobile phones can be used both to enhance and constrain individual and collective
autonomy and agency, and reinforce traditional gender identities as well as open up new
possibilities of gender identification among migrant women in Beijing. I conclude by
discussing the implications of the research and directions for further study.

70
Chapter One Endnotes

1. Appadurai, Modernity at Large, 33.

2. Ibid., 32.

3. Ibid., 3.

4. Ibid., 4.

5. Ibid., 31.

6. See, for example, Castells et al., Mobile Communication and Society, chapter
seven.

7. Castells, Power of Identity, 1.

8. Castells, “Informationalism, Networks,” 23.

9. Ibid., 26.

10. Calhoun, “Social Theory and Politics of Identity,” 10, 12.

11. Castells, Power of Identity, 6-7.

12. Hall, “Who Needs Identity?” 4.

13. Ibid.

14. Foucault, “Two Lectures,” 93.

15. See, for example, Foucault, “The Subject and Power.”

16. I will discuss in further detail Foucault’s notion of power and its relevance for
this project in chapter three.

17. Hall, “Ethnicity,” 344.

18. Hall, “Who Needs Identity?” 6.

19. Gaetano, “Filial Daughters,” 42-43.

20. De Lauretis, Technologies of Gender, 9.

71

21. Lorber, “Believing is Seeing,” 19

22. Bordo, Unbearable Weight, 21.

23. Ibid., 11.

24. Brownell and Wasserstrom point out that the original Daoist concept of
yin/yang privileged female/nature over male/culture. However, Confucian philosophy,
which dominated Chinese thought and social life from the sixth century B.C. until the
early twentieth century, reversed this concept and as such it became more like the
western dualism of male/female. Brownell and Wasserstrom also make an interesting
point that “yin and yang were expressed complementary, hierarchical relationships that
were not necessarily between males and females, even though yang was typically
associated with masculine and yin with feminine principles,” in “Theorizing
Femininities and Masculinities,” 26.

25. Bordo, Unbearable Weight, 15-16. On yin/yang in Chinese medical discourse
see Furth, “Blood, Body, and Gender.”

26. Butler, Gender Trouble, 33.

27. Ibid., 184.

28. Riley, “Am I that Name?,” 1-2.

29. The Qing dynasty, China’s last imperial dynasty, lasted from 1644-1912.

30. Barlow, “Theorizing Women,” 49.

31. Ibid.

32. Alcoff, “Cultural Feminism,” 347.

33. Ibid., 349.

34. Hall, “Ethnicity,” 345.

35. Ibid.

36. Zhang, “Urban Experiences and Social Belonging,” 275.

37. Bhabha, Location of Culture, 5.

38. Ibid., 159.

72

39. See, for example, Friedman, “Hybridization of Roots.”

40. Frello, “Dark Blood,” 6.

41. Hall, “Ethnicity,” 340. The four great decenterings to which Hall refers are the
result of Marxist notions of subject construction, Freud’s discovery of the unconscious,
Saussurian linguistics that posits that language constructs reality and not the reverse,
and the critique of Enlightenment, totalizing universal discourses of Knowledge and
Truth, 341.

42. Liu, Otherness of Self, xi.

43. Ibid., 128.

44. Ibid.

45. Ibid., 160-161.

46. Ibid., 47-49, 96.

47. Ibid., 171.

48. The “post-Mao” era officially started in 1978, following the death in 1976 of
Mao Zedong and the prosecution of the “Gang of Four” (who were blamed for all of the
turmoil of the Cultural Revolution – see note 1 in Chapter 2), and the subsequent rise to
power of Deng Xiaoping and his initiation of market reforms. The speed of reforms
after 1992 and the further marketization of the economy ushered in what is now often
called “post-socialist” or sometimes “late-socialist” China.

49. Ibid., 47, 48.

50. Ibid., 96.

51. See, for example, Crenshaw, “Beyond Racism and Misogyny.”

52. Pun remarks on the “triple oppressions of the Chinese dagongmei by global
capitalism, state socialism, and familial patriarchy that work hand in hand to produce
particular labor exploitations along lines of class, gender, and rural-urban disparity” in
Made in China, 4. Feng also highlights the importance of gender, class, and place in
understanding China’s female migrant workers in Women Migrant Workers. Neither of
these scholars, however, uses the term “intersectionality” or cites Crenshaw’s work.

53. Pun, Made in China, 111.

73

54. Lee, Gender and the South China Miracle, 109.

55. Ibid., 128.

56. Pun, Made in China, 12.

57. Ibid., 11.

58. Yan, “Spectralization of the Rural,” 586.

59. Claude Fischer, America Calling, 8.

60. This definition comes from Winner, “Do Artifacts Pave Politics?” 20. As the
title of his piece suggests, he clearly does not advocate this view.

61. Pinch and Bijker, “The Social Construction of Facts;” Edge, “Social Shaping of
Technology.”

62. Later revisions of the SCOT approach acknowledged the mutual shaping of
technologies and social groups. See, for example the concept of “sociotechnical
ensembles” in Bijker, Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs, 277.

63. Slack and Wise, Culture + Technology, 4.

64. Ibid., 97.

65. Hall and Grossberg, “On Postmodernism and Articulation,” 1.

66. Hall, cited in Slack, “Theory and Method,” 115.

67. Slack, “Theory and Method,” 125.

68. Ibid.

69. Slack and Wise, Culture + Technology, 113.

70. Ibid.

71. Ibid., 128.

72. Ibid., 130.

73. Mackay and Gillespie, “Extending the Social Shaping.”

74

74. Ibid., 698-99.

75. Ibid.

76. Ibid., 702.

77. Ibid., 704.

78. Ito, “Introduction: Personal, Portable, Pedestrian,” 6.

79. Ito, “Personal Portable Pedestrian” (conference paper), 2.

80. Many mobile phone studies refer to Erving Goffman’s notions of “interaction
ritual” and “front stage, back stage” perhaps because much of the early mobile phone
research was conducted by sociologists and anthropologists, not communication
scholars (the exception, of course, is James Katz).

81. Carey, Communication as Culture, 15.

82. Ibid., 18.

83. Ibid., 23.

84. Ibid., 29.

85. McLuhan, Understanding Media, 45.

86. Oksman and Rautiainen, “Extension of the Hand,” 104; Ito, “New Set of
Rules.”

87. Ito, “Introduction: Personal, Portable, Pedestrian,” 1.

88. See, for example, Fujimoto, “Third-Stage Paradigm;” see also Yue, “Mobile
Phone Demonstrates Individuality.”

89. David Turchetti, “SMS Craze Unlocks Way,” 16.

90. Ling and Yttri “Hyper-coordination via Mobile Phones,” 163-164.

91. Cohen and Wakeford, “Making of Mobility, 8.

92. Ling and Yttri, “Hyper-coordination via Mobile Phones,” 161-162. See also,
Carroll et al., “A Field Study.”

93. Green, “Outwardly Mobile,” 207.

75

94. Nafus and Tracey, “Mobile Phone Consumption,” 213.

95. Chu and Yang, “Mobile Phones and New Migrant Workers,” 232; Wang,
“Youth Culture, Music.”

96. Lobet-Maris, “Mobile Phone Tribes,” 87.

97. http://www.nokiausa.com/fashion/landing?cpid=ILC-1007-020.

98. Ling, The Mobile Connection, 85.

99. Ling, “Fashion and Vulgarity,” 97-98.

100. Katz and Sugiyama, “Mobile Phones as Fashion Statements,” 64.

101. Rheingold, “Will the Telephone's Transition.”

102. Fortunati, “Italy: Stereotypes,” 54.

103. Green, “Outwardly Mobile,” 205.

104. Pierre Bourdieu defines social capital as one’s networks and the benefits that
accrue from those networks. Such networks must be constantly reaffirmed and
maintained. See “Forms of Capital,” 248-50. I will discuss social capital in more depth
in chapter four.

105. Fox, “Evolution, Alienation and Gossip.”

106. See, for example, Ling et al., “Mobile Communication and Social Capital;”
see also Sugiyama and. Katz, “Social Conduct, Social Capital.”

107. Johnsen, “Social Context of Mobile,” 167.

108. Taylor and Harper, “The Gift of the Gab? 268.

109. Ling and Yttri, “Hyper-coordination via Mobile Phones,” 140.

110. Ibid.

111. Ibid., 158.

112. Ito and Okabe, “Technosocial Situations,” 264.

76

113. Many of the pieces in Katz and Aakhus’ Perpetual Contact mention this
aspect of mobile telephony among teens and young adults.

114. Law and Peng, “Use of Mobile Phones,” 245.

115. Horst and Miller, The Cell Phone, see chapter five.

116. Ito, "Mobile Phones, Japanese Youth,” 139; Ling and Yttri, “Hyper-
coordination via Mobile Phones,” 152.

117. Castells et al., Mobile Communication and Society, 247.

118. See, for example, Ling, The Mobile Connection, chapter three; see also
Oksman and Rautiainen, “Perhaps it's a Body Part,” 295-297.

119. Anonymous. “I Want Your Text.”

120. Cockburn, “Circuit of Technology,” 32.

121. Skog, “Mobiles and the Norwegian Teen,” 256.

122. Oksman and Rautiainen, “Extension of the Hand,” 107.

123. Oksman and Rautiainen, “Perhaps it's a Body Part,” 297.

124. Skog, “Mobiles and the Norwegian Teen,” 262-263.

125. Plant, On the Mobile, 12.

126. Lemish and Cohen, “On the Gendered Nature,” 518-520.

127. Nordli and Sørensen, “Diffusion as Inclusion?”

128. Cingular Wireless, “Guys Still Gab More.”

129. IDC “What Makes Mobile Users Tick?”

130. Castells, Rise of the Network Society, 424.

131. Ibid., 442.

132. Castells et al., Mobile Communication and Society, 172.

133. Castells, Rise of the Network Society, 443.

77

134. Plant, On the Mobile, 23.

135. See, for example, Matsuda, “Discourses of Keitai in Japan.”

136. Gergen, “Challenge of Absent Presence,” 227.

137. Ling and Yttri, “Hyper-coordination via Mobile Phones,” 139.

138. Kim, “Korea: Personal Meanings,” 70.

139. Ito, "Mobile Phones, Japanese Youth,” 143.

140. Townsend, “Mobile Communication in the Twenty-first Century City,” 71.

141. Laurier, “Why People Say Where They are.”

142. Ito, "Mobile Phones, Japanese Youth,” 142.

143. Katz and Aakhus, “A Theory of Apparatgeist.”

144. The two major exceptions are Ito, "Mobile Phones, Japanese Youth,” and
Ling, “Control, Emancipation, and Status”

145. Geertz, “Thick Description,” 7.

146. In addition to these methods I also conducted a survey among rural-to-urban
migrant workers in Beijing with 275 male and female respondents, but the results are
not included as part of this analysis.

147. On the development and deployment of scientific anthropological methods in
the early twentieth century see Clifford, “On Ethnographic Authority.”

148. Ibid., 24.

149. Clifford, “Partial Truths” 10.

150. Ibid., 12.

151. Ibid., 2.

152. Ibid., 9.

153. Ibid., 7.

78

154. Ibid., 6.

155. Geertz, “Thick Description,” 9, 15.

156. Clifford, “Partial Truths,” 11, 14.

157. Ibid., 15, 17.

158. The major feminist response to Writing Culture appeared in the volume
Women Writing Culture. See Behar’s “Introduction: Out of Exile” in this volume.

159. For a summary and critique of this viewpoint, see Stacey, “Feminist
Ethnography?”

160. Hartsock, “The Feminist Standpoint.”

161. Scott, “Experience,” 24.

162. Ibid, 33.

163. Gray, Research Practice for Cultural Studies, 25.

164. I am indebted to this insight into how to reconcile ethnographic feminist
research with Scott’s critique of feminists’ reliance on experience to Banet-Weiser in
The Most Beautiful Girl in the World, 13-18. Although her subject is American beauty
pageant contestants, a topic about as far removed from Chinese migrant women as
could be imagined, her articulation of feminist methodology applied to ethnography is
extremely insightful and helpful.

165. Gray, Research Practice for Cultural Studies, 34.

166. Geertz, “Thick Description,” 29.

167. Wendy A. Weiss, cited in Murphy and Kraidy, “International
Communication,” 315.

168. Bettie, Women without Class, 23.

169. Cited in ibid.

170. See, for example, Lotz, “Assessing Qualitative Television Audience
Research;” see also Visweswaran, Fictions of Feminist Ethnography.

171. Bird, Audience in Everyday Life, 15.

79

172. Ibid., 16.

173. Ethnographic studies of factory workers include Feng, Women Migrant
Workers; Lee, Gender and the South China Miracle; and Pun, Made in China.
Ethnographies of domestic workers include Arianne Gaetano, “Off the Farm” and
“Filial Daughters.” See also, Yan, “Neoliberal Governmentality” and “Spectralization
of the Rural.”

174. See Cartier, Castells, and Qiu, "Information Have-Less;” see also Chu and
Yang, “Mobile Phones and New Migrant Workers;” Law and Peng, “Use of Mobile
Phones.”

175. Both Li Tao and Li Zhen had formerly been employed by the Beijing
Cultural Development Center, Li Tao as one of those in charge of the Migrant Women’s
Club and Li Zhen as the editor-in-chief of Rural Women. They both left in 2003 under
less than amicable circumstances and set up Facilitator.

176. Throughout this dissertation I use an exchange rate of 7.7 yuan per $1.00, the
rate for most of the time I was in Beijing. Since I left Beijing the value of the dollar has
fallen against the yuan.

177. Ito, "Mobile Phones, Japanese Youth,” 132.

178. Ginzburg, “Clues: Morelli, Freud,” 86.

80
CHAPTER TWO: MARKET REFORMS AND (DIS)CONTINUITY
IN POST-SOCIALIST CHINA

None of my friends from my village are still at home. Everyone has gone
out to work. At home there is nothing. Beijing is developed. Here I can
learn something, but at home there is just farming, and I’m not good at
that.
Cui Yiping, Beijing, January 20, 2007.

Nearly 30 years ago the Chinese government embarked on a course of
development that unleashed processes of change the consequences of which nobody,
either inside China or “China watchers” outside the country, could have predicted. To
jumpstart a stagnant economy and make a clear break with the Maoist past, in 1978 the
Chinese leadership, under the direction of Deng Xiaoping, boldly embarked on a
program of “reform and opening” (gaige kaifang). Through advancing the “four
modernizations” (in industry, agriculture, science and technology, and defense), China
would “link tracks with the rest of the world” (yu shijie jiegui) and in so doing bring
stability and prosperity to a nation still recovering from the economic, political, and
social upheaval wrought by the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).
1
Whereas Maoist
modernity had emphasized egalitarianism and perpetual revolution, China’s new reform
path would be based on competition, merit, and an end to class struggle.
The last few decades have thus seen a shift from a centralized economy
emphasizing heavy industry to a market economy based on export processing (primarily
centered in “Special Economic Zones” [SEZs] around China’s eastern coastal areas)
and the growth of the domestic service sector. The marketization of China’s economy
and its overall course of development have followed a teleology – where “some must

81
get rich first and then others will follow” – that emphasizes “catching up” with other
industrialized nations and reclaiming China’s rightful place on the world stage. It has
also necessitated a profound ideological reconfiguration and repudiation of Maoist
frugality and austerity, perhaps summed up most succinctly in Deng Xiaoping’s famous
statement, “To get rich is glorious” (zhi fu guang rong). Indeed, in the 1980s China’s
average annual GDP growth rate was 10.2 percent, compared to just 5.5 percent during
the 1970s; in the first half of the 1990s it was 12.8 percent.
2
In the last several years this
number has continued to hover in the double digits.
Certainly many Chinese have benefited materially from the changes brought about
by the reforms and China’s entry into the global market economy. The nation’s growing
urban middle class now has access to new housing with modern amenities, automobiles,
myriad forms of leisure and entertainment, and the latest technological devices. The
“consumer revolution” which first emerged in the mid-1980s has been joined since the
1990s by a “telecommunications revolution,” which has made China the country with
both the largest number of mobile phone and Internet users in the world. However, not
everyone is benefiting equally from these economic, societal, and technological
transformations. Summing up the state of the People’s Republic at the start of the new
millennium, Peter Hays Gries and Stanley Rosen assert, “Deng Xiaoping’s
decentralization of economic authority and limited embrace of the market mechanism
has paid off. China’s economy has grown at or near double-digit rates for most of the
past two decades…. But economic growth has been uneven, benefiting cities over the
countryside and coastal areas over the hinterland.”
3

82
In this chapter, I explore the reasons for and consequences of such uneven
development in order to set the context for this study of how rural-to-urban migrant
women are engaging with mobile phones for identity construction, agency, autonomy,
and sociality in Beijing. I begin by discussing the origins and outcomes of China’s rigid
hukou, or household registration system, and how current economic policies favoring
the cities and coastal areas have worked in tandem with the hukou policy to effectively
create a bifurcated society divided between the urban and rural areas. Prior to the
reforms, those with rural hukou were for the most part destined to a life of agriculture
and were separated from their urban counterparts geographically due to strict
regulations on mobility. With the economic reforms and the loosening of the hukou
policy, however, China’s cities have become beacons of hope for millions of rural
residents who seek employment and opportunities to improve their lives.
Following my discussion of the hukou policy I explore the phenomenon of rural-
to-urban migration in China with an emphasis on the characteristics, material
circumstances, and desires of female migrants, as well as the way China’s suzhi, or
“quality,” discourse positions female migrants and rural areas as backward while
upholding China’s urban centers as the source of modernity and progress. I then
examine China’s urban consumer revolution and how it has changed people’s sense of
identity and autonomy, and close by outlining another “revolution” in China: the growth
of telecommunications, in particular mobile phones. Throughout each part of this
discussion, I highlight the key role that gender has played and continues to play in all of
these developments, and how the reforms clearly have affected men and women
differently in numerous ways. Though I separate all of these phenomena for analytic

83
reasons, in reality they have emerged from interwoven processes that are indeed
mutually constitutive, and they are all critical in producing migrant women’s
understanding of themselves, their position in society, and their engagement with
technology in the city.

Hukou and the Urban-Rural Divide
To fully grasp the current condition of China’s development and internal
migration, it is first necessary to understand China’s hukou, or household registration
system, which according to anthropologists Sulamith Potter and Jack Potter, has created
a “caste-like system of social stratification” in the People’s Republic of China.
4
Though
the hukou policy has roots in Imperial China’s baojia system – which was designed as a
method of social control and taxation – its particular manifestation during the Mao era
created an extremely modern and powerful system of population management and
organization.
5
Today, despite economic liberalization and social transformations that
have substantially weakened the hukou as a method for regulating people’s mobility, it
still has profound effects in determining one’s access to a range of resources and
opportunities, and consequently, one’s life possibilities.
Hukou 1955 – 1978
In the early days of the People’s Republic, citizens were allowed to travel
relatively freely between city and countryside. However, as urban overcrowding,
unemployment, and food shortages prompted fears of social instability, in 1955 the
government issued a directive that categorized people as belonging to either
“agricultural” (farmer/peasant) or “non-agricultural” (worker) households, according to

84
whether they lived in a rural or urban area and regardless of whether some designated as
“peasants” were not actually engaged in agricultural work. Food rationing in cities also
began, and in rural areas the government hastened collectivization in order to increase
agricultural productivity. Since Mao’s development strategy emphasized the growth of
heavy industry, savings from agriculture was then transferred to support urban
industrialization, following a “price scissors” policy.
6
In 1958, with the “Regulations on
Hukou Registration in the People’s Republic of China,” migration policies were further
restricted and control was centralized in the urban Public Security Bureau (PSB). These
regulations solidified the hukou policy and dictated that all citizens were for the most
part destined to live their lives in their designated hukou location. Household
registration was subsequently established at birth, and changes in residence were strictly
controlled. Institutionalized separation between rural and urban areas was thus
solidified and with few exceptions would remain intact for the next two decades.
7

During the Mao era, enforcement of the hukou system was possible due to a
Soviet-style centrally planned economy and what Dorothy Solinger has referred to as
the “urban public goods regime” whereby urban residents – the vaunted “workers” –
were entitled to a range of social welfare benefits such as education, healthcare,
employment, and housing allocated through their state work unit.
8
They also received
food ration coupons based on their possession of an urban hukou. In contrast, rural
residents – “peasant farmers” – were denied this “iron rice bowl” and were supposed to
be self-sufficient through the rural agricultural cooperatives. In addition to providing
grain for themselves, they also had to provide food for people living in cities. Peasants
were therefore those who “ate rice supplied by the household or the team,” while

85
workers were those who “ate rice supplied by the state.”
9
Because urban hukou
guaranteed such a wide range of state-provided benefits, it was associated with a better
material standard of living and an exclusive, privileged status. Thus, Zhang Li argues
that hukou should not be seen only “as a system of population management and material
redistribution but rather a badge of citizenship with profound social, cultural, and
political implications for the lives of Chinese people.”
10

Though Mao’s revolution was predicated on peasant support, and in official
rhetoric Mao himself glorified “poor” and “middle” peasants as the vanguard of China’s
communist revolution, the profound irony of Mao’s hukou system was that it did not
just divide China spatially; it also created a hierarchical distinction between the city and
the countryside and between urban and rural residents.
11
In fact, many have noted
Mao’s contradictory attitude toward China’s peasantry. While China’s communist
revolution was indeed a peasant revolution, Mao seemed to agree at least partially with
Friedrich Engels, who distrusted peasants as too conservative and thus unable to have
proper revolutionary consciousness.
It is important to point out, however, that stigmatization of China’s rural
inhabitants has roots far preceding Mao. Confucius voiced disdain for the rural
populace, and China’s reformist intellectuals of the early twentieth century targeted
peasants and China’s countryside as symbolic of China’s backwardness and weakness.
In their thinking, building a modern nation entailed repudiating traditional Chinese
culture with its “feudalism” and “superstition” that were most deeply rooted in the
countryside. As Myron Cohen observes, China’s farmer peasants – the vast majority of
the population – were thus configured by most reformers as passive, pitiful, and in need

86
of education and guidance by an enlightened, urban elite.
12
It was also during this time
that the word “peasant” (nongmin) entered into Chinese vocabulary, a result of Japanese
influence. As an abstract “modern” word, it could take on a powerful discursive
function as one of the “basic negative criteria designating a new status group, one held
by definition to be incapable of creative and autonomous participation in China’s
reconstruction” (emphasis in original).
13
Hence, the urban-centered hukou policy was
one area where Mao’s revolution ideologically paralleled the past it was supposedly
burying.
The hukou policy also demonstrated continuity with China’s patriarchal,
institutionalized gender discrimination. Though lineage in China traditionally derives
through the male, and Mao’s class labels were also inherited through the father, until
1998 a child’s hukou was passed on through the mother. This policy, which obviously
contradicted Chinese custom, was meant to limit mobility as much as possible.
14

Though hukou policy strictly controlled people’s movement during the Mao era, the
ways in which one’s hukou status could be changed unfairly advantaged men. For
example, joining the army was one viable route, since after being discharged one might
receive a job as a worker in an urban area. Another possibility was through passing the
university entrance exam and gaining admission to an urban university. Becoming a
Communist Party member and moving up the Party ranks could also lead to a change in
hukou status. In all cases, men held a distinct advantage over women. By designating
that hukou pass through the mother, the state effectively limited its economic
obligations should a male with urban hukou have dependents with rural hukou.
15
On the
other hand, the most common way for rural women to change their hukou was through

87
marriage migration. However, this usually meant a change from one village to another –
in other words a change in hukou location not status – since marriages between urban
and rural people were (and are) extremely rare. Even if such marriages took place, these
unions would not result in transference of a rural hukou to an urban one. Thus, rural
women’s geographic (rural-to-urban) and social mobility was severely restricted by the
hukou policy.
Economic Reforms and Inequality
When the Chinese government instituted market reforms in the late seventies it
first focused on rural areas. Agricultural collectives were dismantled and the “household
responsibility system” was instituted, which enabled rural households to hold long-term
land leases and to gain more decision making in agricultural production. Greater
agricultural efficiency created more surplus labor, which at first was absorbed by
township and village enterprises (TVEs) that were developed in rural areas under a
policy of “leaving the land but not the village” (litu bu lixiang). Limited markets were
also permitted, and as a result of such policies peasant farmers benefited tremendously.
From the late seventies to the mid-eighties the ratio of urban to rural per capita personal
income dropped from 2.37:1 to 1.70:1.
16
Market mechanisms also meant that access to
food and other goods in urban areas were not necessarily linked to urban hukou, and
peasant farmers could sell their surplus grain and produce and offer other menial
services in market towns. All of these conditions enabled the beginnings of China’s
rural-to-urban migration.
In the mid-eighties, however, the state changed its reform focus from agriculture
to export processing and integration with the global economy. One result was that the

88
TVEs shifted to a capital intensive rather than a labor intensive approach and thus were
less able to accommodate rural surplus labor.
17
At the same time, central government
policies favored eastern coastal cities as targets for development, with Special
Economic Zones (SEZs) created to attract a large amount of foreign direct investment
(FDI). For example, although before the mid-eighties there was very little foreign
capital in China, in 1995 China received $35.9 billion of FDI, nearly 40 percent of all of
the FDI that the world’s low- and middle-income countries received that year.
18

Shenzhen near the Hong Kong border, China’s first SEZ, was established in 1980 and
since then has gone from a rural backwater to a city of over 12 million with an average
annual growth rate of 28 percent.
19

Though poverty had sharply declined during the first years of the reforms,
inequality in income distribution, especially between urban and rural areas, started to
rise after the mid-eighties. As Azizur Khan and Carl Riskin explain, the architects of
China’s policies thought that just about everyone would benefit from the reforms, so
that:
any increase in inequality would be accompanied by a reduction in
poverty—i.e., a decline in the proportion of population below some
absolute level of income representing a minimum acceptable standard of
living. The official view was that ‘a rising tide lifts all boats,’ and the
expectation was clearly that the increase in inequality would not be great
enough to outweigh the effect of higher growth and thus to induce greater
poverty.
20

However, though China through its reforms had managed to greatly enhance its
economic efficiency, this was at the cost of economic equity. By the mid-nineties China
had become one of developing Asia’s more unequal countries. Urban workers who were

89
laid-off from inefficient state enterprises plunged into poverty, and as the reform
policies concentrated on the more well-off provinces of the eastern coastal regions,
China’s central and western areas began to feel the effects. For example, the urban to
rural per capita personal income ratio rose to 2.6 by 1994.
21
By 2002, although overall
income disparity had declined in China compared to the preceding decade, there was a
rising gap between average urban and rural incomes.
22
In 2004, urban residents’ income
was 3.21 times that of rural residents; in 2005 it was 3.22, and in 2006 it was 3.48.
23
As
John Knight and Lina Song state, “During the commune period the rural sector was
expected to be self-reliant. The peasants had to take care of themselves and not be a
fiscal burden to the State. The reform period retains a good deal of continuity with the
past. Relatively little gross revenue flows down the rural tiers of government.”
24
These
policies and outcomes set the course for what would come to be known across the
country as a “tide of migrants” (mingongchao).
The Floating Population and Hukou Erosion
Though in the mid-eighties rural peasants had engaged in non-farm work,
particularly in the TVEs mentioned earlier, as the economic reforms progressed and as
the old apparatuses of state control were broken down, more and more rural residents
began to “leave the land.”
25
China’s construction boom of the late eighties drew male
migrants to the thriving eastern cities while domestic service, or baomu, became one of
the most common jobs for migrant women. In 1989, three million rural women worked
as baomu in urban homes.
26
Because a person’s hukou was increasingly less tied to food
and housing subsidies in urban areas, by the early nineties more and more rural
migrants began to pour into China’s larger cities such as Beijing. Between 1985 and

90
1990 there were 35.3 million rural-to-urban migrant workers.
27
By 2000 this number
had increased to about 90 million.
28
Currently, there are estimated to be between 120
and 150 million of this so-called “floating population” (liudong renkou).
29
In 2007,
Beijing had over 5.4 million migrant workers out of a total population of approximately
17.4 million.
30
It should be noted, however, that accurate numbers of migrants are
notoriously hard to obtain, both because the word “migrant” can have several meanings
and because of the large number of the floating population who often fail to register in
their new location and thus are difficult to track in surveys and census counts.
31

Though rural migrants have substantially contributed to China’s economic
development, this does not mean that they have been welcomed and easily integrated
into urban areas. In China’s cities, migrants upset many of the taken-for-granted social
and cultural assumptions that have characterized the People’s Republic since its
founding. These include the separation of the urban and the rural not only in terms of
geography, but also in perceived degree of “culture” as well as entitlement to coveted
jobs and a range of benefits, as discussed above. Furthermore, because until recently the
work unit was the only proper location for employment and containment within the
socialist system, and since migrants are considered “temporary” workers and as such
not entitled to the benefits nor the mechanisms of surveillance that were once a function
of work unit affiliation, their presence has engendered fear and suspicion on the part of
urbanites. For these reasons, migrants are often blamed for overcrowding and crime in
cities as well as taking coveted jobs in the downsized industrial sector.
32
Migrants have
often been characterized as uncouth and “backward,” disorderly (wuxu), and a group of
rural escapees “walking blind” (mangliu) in the city.
33

91
In addition to such discursive constructions of migrants, they face significant
material and institutionalized constraints in China’s cities. They are segregated into
low-paying, low-status jobs and they tend to make half of what urban residents make.
34

They also are forced to lead what has been called “isolated lives” since they work such
long hours, do not have the time or money to enjoy leisure spaces, live in segregated
areas, and have little meaningful social contact with urban residents.
35
Migrant workers
also face exploitation in the workplace, including a lack of labor contracts, forced
overtime, unpaid wages, unsafe working conditions, and little or no health insurance
benefits.
36
These problems tend to be exacerbated in large cities like Beijing and
Guangzhou.
37
They are also subject to police and government mistreatment. In one of
the more infamous cases of such harassment in Beijing, an entire migrant village
housing thousands of migrants from the Wenzhou area of Zhejiang Province was
demolished by authorities on the premise that it was illegal and undermined state
authority.
38

Still, due to the phenomenal growth in the number of rural peasants in China’s
cities, the government has been forced to make concessions regarding the rigid hukou
system, though these policies have often lacked coherence. In the mid-nineties, in place
of restrictions on temporary residence in cities, the Ministry of Labor required all
migrants to have an identification card (shenfen zheng) and to obtain three certificates –
a temporary residence card, an employment certificate, and an employment card – so
that they could legally live and work in cities. These cards were supposed to cost
approximately 20 yuan but a survey conducted in 1996 among migrants in four cities
revealed that most were paying 10 or 12 times this much, meaning these cards had

92
become another means of exploiting migrant workers.
39
For this reason, some migrants
avoid obtaining these cards altogether, earning them the label of sanwu or the “three
withouts.” In March 2003, a migrant named Sun Zhigang was stopped in Guangzhou
and when he was not able to produce any of his cards, he was put in jail in accordance
with legal statutes. While in detention he was beaten to death, and his case generated
such a public outcry that afterwards Beijing and other cities ended forcible detentions
and deportations of migrants without permits.
40

Other policies have also been implemented. As mentioned earlier, in 1998 hukou
rules were amended so that children could inherit either the mother or father’s hukou
location. Furthermore, while migrant children had previously been banned from
attending urban schools, these restrictions were also gradually relaxed, although the
prohibitive fees still keep many migrant children from enrolling in urban schools.
41

Instead, they attend poorly funded and substandard migrant schools, which in many
cases are formally illegal and subject to periodic government closures.
42

Hukou has also been commodified in different regions. For example, in 1993
hukou reforms carried out in a number of small towns and cities enabled migrants who
had a stable residence and employment (of more than two years) to obtain an urban
hukou.
43
Further measures in 2001 eventually abolished migrant quotas in small towns
and cities in order to absorb some of the estimated 160 million surplus rural workers
who could not make a living by farming.
44
Policies in large cites have been more
restrictive, such as the “blue-seal” hukou, which allows certain “talented” – meaning
educated and/or wealthy – people to buy an urban hukou. When Beijing introduced such
a scheme in 2001, it was explicitly for those who had invested heavily in private

93
enterprises in the city.
45
At the time, only one person who applied on the basis of wealth
was qualified to obtain this hukou.
46
Thus, particularly in large and more prestigious
cities, hukou reform has mainly privileged the wealthy and educated, while the vast
majority of migrant workers in low-wage, unskilled jobs remain excluded.
In recent years, the government has taken a somewhat more compassionate,
though still contradictory, view of migrant laborers, in recognition that China’s
economy depends on them and that the countryside cannot support the amount of rural
surplus labor. Since 2003 the central government has promulgated a series of new
regulations and laws that have focused on labor protection and limited social welfare
benefits, such as medical insurance, for rural-to-urban migrants.
47
However, these have
been unequally implemented and difficult to enforce. Though as recently as 2007 there
were announcements about impending major hukou reforms, the policy remains firmly
entrenched, an “institutionally imposed invisible Great Wall which divides rural and
urban people and generates substantial differences in their levels of economic
welfare.”
48
According to hukou scholar Wang Fei-ling, although during the Mao era and
the early years of the reforms, the hukou created institutionalized exclusion based on
whether one was in a rural or urban area, its current effect has been to produce
exclusion based on economic haves and have-nots.
49

China’s Dagongmei
China’s economic reforms and current hukou policy have had particular
consequences for China’s female migrants. As in the Mao era, the hukou system
continues to produce distinctly gendered outcomes for rural (and urban) residents,

94
which are consistent with and exacerbated by other socio-cultural factors, such as
patriarchal norms that have traditionally afforded males more autonomy, mobility, and
power. According to cultural geographer Cindy Fan, such traditions reduce rural
women’s range of options to improve their lives, and for this reason “gender hierarchies
are critical for understanding the decision-making process, pattern and consequences of
migration.”
50

Perhaps it is not surprising that there are fewer female than male migrants; women
comprise approximately 30 to 40 percent of the total rural-to-urban migrant
population.
51
The majority of these women are young (mid-teens to mid-twenties),
semi-literate, unskilled, and single.
52
Because most have not had previous job
experience and their rural upbringing has trained them to be less willing to take risks,
they tend to stay within migrant social networks and find housing with employers or in
cramped rooms with relatives or other migrant women.
53
Their relatively restricted
mobility within the city contrasts with male migrants’ more unrestrained movement.
While most female migrants search for jobs in their own province, 20 to 40 percent
leave for large cities or the Special Economic Zones mentioned above, and women are
more likely than men to engage in inter-provincial migration.
54

Reasons for Migration
Young rural women’s reasons for migration can vary significantly, with diverse
push and pull factors. In earlier research, the most common reasons given were to
escape poverty or to improve the overall financial status of the family; thus, several
scholars have understood migration as a household strategy, where a young woman’s
labor in an outside town or city is designed to improve the economic standing of the

95
entire family.
55
In her research, Fan found that money sent back home by female
migrants was important in improving the family’s livelihood.
56
Others, however, have
disputed the significance of remittances.
57
Many rural females make the decision to
leave the village on their own and some depart against their parents’ wishes. Due to
China’s agricultural reforms, in all but the poorest of rural households, young women’s
production is often considered surplus labor. Since many have dropped out or been
forced to quit school (usually after attending at least one or two years of junior middle
school), they often feel bored or useless at home.
58
Migration thus offers a chance to
“see the world” and “to seek opportunities for development” through learning new
skills.
59

In addition, many young rural women view working away from home as a route to
unprecedented freedom and autonomy – even if temporarily – before settling down for
marriage. In the city they can escape the restrictive patriarchal conditions of their
villages, where they are subordinated in their family, and their lives are dictated by
housework, farming, and, after marriage, reproduction. Migrating can also serve as a
means of postponing marriage or evading an unwelcome arranged marriage.
60
In
addition, migrant women’s employment may improve their marital options by allowing
them to secure more money for a dowry.
61

Some women also migrate with the intent of saving enough money to return home
in the future and start their own business. In Fan’s study, many migrant women who
had returned indicated that they would open a small business or engage in some other
type of entrepreneurial work. It is hard to imagine they would have had this vision or
opportunity without their migration experience.
62
Fan also found that for a significant

96
number of women, their earnings from working in a city clearly helped to raise their
status back home.
63
In these cases, the women’s autonomy did not end once they
returned to the village even though upon return they still had to contend with
institutional and cultural forces that constrain their potential agency. Sociologist Rachel
Murphy also noted that the experience of working in a city allows some rural women to
gain enough income and skills to become entrepreneurs upon returning home. However,
their success is hindered by smaller social networks, limited access to resources, and
gender norms that emphasize a woman’s role in tending to domestic concerns. Still,
their urban experience gives them a certain amount of status and autonomy vis-à-vis
their husbands and other relatives, and it often leads to their exercising forms of agency
absent among non-migrant rural women.
64

Types of Employment
In general, jobs for rural-to-urban migrants frequently fall within the “three Ds;”
that is, they are dirty, dangerous, and demeaning. Single female migrants have an
especially circumscribed realm of employment that has been described as “highly
gender-specific and status-ascribed.”
65
As anthropologist Arianne Gaetano states,
“Young rural women’s choices in the urban job market are limited by notions of
gender-appropriate labor and by discriminatory policies that, alongside the hukou
system, restrict migrants’ access to coveted state-sector jobs and certain occupations.”
66

Most women find jobs as household maids (the baomu mentioned earlier), as live-in
employees in family workshops, or as unskilled industrial or low-level service
workers.
67
In stark contrast to the relative safety of the domestic realm, some women,
either by force or by choice, end up as sex workers. Many of these gender-specific

97
occupations were non-existent or hardly existed in the Mao era, and “such gender
segregation of the labor market reflects traditional gender roles and stereotypes that are
more deeply rooted than socialist institutions.”
68
In contrast to single female migrants,
most married rural women are more likely to become small entrepreneurs in the city,
often in partnership with their spouses. Some work on construction sites alongside their
husbands, but when they do they make about 50 to 80 percent of what males make since
they are less able to do heavy physical labor.
69

Female migrants are said to have lower job expectations than their male
counterparts and are thought to be less likely to protest unfair work conditions.
70
They
frequently are employed in jobs that urban women are unwilling to do, and they are also
excluded from many jobs reserved for urbanites. If they do have the same job as an
urban woman, they receive less pay and have less job security. They also make much
less than their rural male counterparts.
71
For example, many surveys have shown that
women sometimes make half what male migrants make, as with the female construction
workers just mentioned. Wang Feng found that the earnings of female migrants in
Shanghai were 20 percent less than male migrants, even when age, education, and type
of occupation were considered.”
72

Prejudice and Discrimination
Not surprisingly, many migrant women are often the victims of exploitation, as
they do monotonous, low-paying, and often arduous work. In particular, those who
work as domestics or in cottage industries encounter a reduced access to social spaces,
due to long hours and isolated working conditions. Compared to male migrants, female
migrants are more likely to say they are scared to leave their immediate surroundings

98
because of unfamiliarity with the city or a fear of traffickers or thieves. Many female
migrants are often placed in situations where employers supervise them in both the
workplace and their place of residence in parent-child type relationships.
73
For example,
in her study of household workshops owned by Wenzhou migrants in the Zhejiangcun
area of Beijing, Zhang Li observed that young female “wage-earners” were extremely
vulnerable to exploitation. They worked long hours, received very low wages, and
occupied a severely restricted social space. While living in Beijing many of them never
left the Zhejiangcun area. Their exploitation, however, was concealed within what
Zhang calls a “reinvented family ideology” due to the position of these young women in
their employers’ households, which follow traditional, patriarchal rules of family
discipline.
74

Like the wage-earners in Zhejiangcun, many migrant women face additional
prejudice within the migrant community. For example, women who are maids are
positioned at the bottom of the social hierarchy since traditionally in China serving
others is seen as undignified.
75
However, as Lina Song notes, the fact that young rural
women “predominate in the urban housemaid labor market” is also proof of their
already low social position.
76
Those who are poorer or less educated tend to take lower
status jobs, and this combines with ethnic and regional differences to create further
stratification. According to Dorothy Solinger, “Henan women looked down on
Anhuinese and Sichuanese women for becoming baomu (nursemaids), and Sichuanese
disparaged those Henanese and Anhui people who gathered trash; Anhui scrap-pickers
were generally despised by all.”
77
Regarding China’s southern factories Pun Ngai states,
“The identification of a person according to region or ethnicity embodies a sense of

99
spatial inequality far more subtle than the rural-urban disparity. Where one is from and
one’s dialect foretells one’s status and wealth, and thus one’s bargaining power and
position in the workplace hierarchy.”
78

As Fan notes, migrant women are widely perceived to be immoral due to the
traditional notion that women’s place is in the domestic realm. By leaving the home and
the village, they violate social taboos about women’s, particularly rural women’s,
proper place.
79
Sensationalized media stories and even academic accounts about the
sexual depravity of rural women reinforce these stereotypes.
80
Those who work in hair
salons or in bars as hostesses or entertainers are often presumed to be involved in sex
work even when they are employed in legitimate establishments. Female migrants are
also blamed for having more unwanted pregnancies and abortions.
81
Because they are
suspected of violating China’s stringent family planning policies, after having children
they are then labeled “excess birth guerillas” (chaosheng youjidui).”
82

For all of these reasons, it would seem that in many ways, young migrant women
have escaped one form of oppression – the rural patriarchal village – for another.
According to sociologist Tan Shen, migrant women “initially experience tremendous
psychological pressures, and their feelings of being adrift and missing home are
intense.”
83
Most continue to be in close contact with their home village while they are
away. In addition to filial and familial obligations, the feeling of always being an
outsider in the city is thus a significant reason the majority of migrants eventually return
home.
84
Despite such obstacles, several studies conducted during the nineties found that
more female than male migrant workers were likely to indicate that they were satisfied
with their experience, especially because the city afforded them a certain degree of

100
autonomy and the opportunity to improve their economic status.
85
In her study of
migrants in Chengdu, Louise Beynon found that more important than the women’s
wages or changes in their actual autonomy was “the perception of autonomy and
independence.” This was achieved through their chance to make a “space of their own”
in the city and in so doing escape “rural drudgery.”
86
Gaetano also asserts the
importance of the symbolic value of migrating, but as secondary to the actual agency
migrant women are able to exercise through their migration experience. Still, for many,
their raised expectations regarding what their life would be like in the city compared to
the reality they often face means that they are also eventually very disillusioned.
87

Female Migrants and Suzhi
Certainly for many women the allure of migration stems from China’s discourses
of urban cosmopolitanism and modernity. China’s current project of modernization
privileges the city, positioning it as the origin and source of a revitalized and proud
Chinese economy, culture, and nation, and by extension, the desired location, or rather
the only location for constructing a modern identity. The countryside, by contrast, is
framed as an economic and spiritual wasteland, where remnants of “feudal” tradition
and conservative and outmoded “peasant” values operate to lock people in perpetual
stagnation. In Yan Hairong’s words, “embedded in the post-Mao culture of modernity is
an epistemic violence against the countryside that spectralizes the rural in both material
and symbolic practices.”
88
The social construction of the countryside as inherently
wanting ignores both Maoist and reform era policies that have created this “social fact.”
Nonetheless, the chance to broaden one’s horizons through exposure to an urban,

101
globalized environment is a performance of modernity not available to those in China’s
small villages and townships.
Constitutive of this “spectralization of the rural” is the notion of suzhi, or quality,
that has become predominant in China in official as well as popular discourse in the
past couple of decades. The English translation of “quality” does not really completely
convey the Chinese meaning, which encompasses quality as a whole, as well as
qualities, in particular one’s bodily, moral, and educational suzhi.
89
The suzhi discourse
first gained widespread prominence in China through propaganda campaigns designed
to promote the one-child policy initiated in 1979. In these campaigns, limiting the
number of China’s people was configured as a way to improve the quality of China’s
population as a whole.
90
Similarly, when China embarked on educational reforms in the
late eighties, “education for quality” (suzhi jiaoyu) was promoted to counter the
emphasis in education on teaching to the college entrance exams and to stress
“education for the purpose of improving the quality of the people.”
91

Cultivating suzhi can take many forms, including mental as well as physical
exercise. It generally entails developing skills, manners, self-discipline, and refinement,
and this can be accomplished especially through work discipline and through education
of all kinds, including learning a foreign language and gaining technical skills. In
current usage, suzhi implies qualities that are internalized at a deep level and that are
based on one’s upbringing. In order to avoid its eugenics connotations, however,
emphasis is placed on possibilities for improving suzhi. According to anthropologist
Andrew Kipnis, in contemporary China “suzhi has taken on sacred overtones. It now

102
marks the hierarchal and moral distinction between the high and the low and its
improvement is a mission of national importance.”
92

All Chinese citizens are meant to be interpellated into the suzhi discourse, yet
because understandings of suzhi produce distinct rankings of groups of people, both
those in the countryside and migrants in the city are especially subject to critiques of
their suzhi. Because one’s internal suzhi is supposed to be manifest in one’s outward
appearance and behaviors, migrants’ lack of education and their supposed poor
upbringing – a result of substandard educational facilities and poverty – are mapped
onto their rustic appearance, especially newly arrived migrants. In other words,
urbanites link “the specificity of the migrant’s dress with her overall
physical/mental/moral Quality.”
93

Perhaps unsurprisingly the media in China are frequently quite open about the
perceived backwardness of China’s countryside and in particular deride the “low
quality” of rural women.
94
Certainly migrant women are aware of these discourses, and
for them the city is the only place where they can improve their suzhi through “gaining
some skills” and becoming “modern.” Compared to men, more female migrants place a
high value on city life and more of them migrate to cities as opposed to townships or
other villages.
95
Thus, as mentioned above, for many, more significant than the
economic rewards or improvement in social status is the symbolic importance of
migrating.
96
It is not surprising, then, that the longer female migrants are away from
home, the greater propensity they have, compared to males, to gradually spend more of
their salary on clothes and make-up rather than sending it home.
97

103
In fact, the so-called “second generation” migrant workers, both male and female,
are more likely than the generation before them to embrace city life and to strive to
improve their suzhi. Unlike their parents, for the most part they have more education,
have never known extreme hunger, and quite often have never engaged in farm work
and are therefore less willing to do hard physical labor.
98
In the city, these migrants, all
born after 1980, tend to compare themselves and their standard of living to their urban
peers rather than their counterparts back home in their villages.
99
They are more likely
to enroll in education and training courses in the city and they do not necessarily send
remittances home. They are also are more inclined to participate in China’s burgeoning
consumer culture and to spend most of their salaries on consumer goods like clothing
and mobile phones.
100

China’s Consumer Revolution
When the Chinese government embarked on its economic reforms in the late
seventies, obviously one of the key aims was raising the standard of living for China’s
citizens. As part of the modernization drive, Deng Xiaoping set a goal that ordinary
people would be able to achieve “a ‘xiaokang’ or a relatively comfortable life by the
end of the century.”
101
Indeed, between 1978 and 1990, per capita income doubled
(after adjusting for inflation),
102
and it has continued to grow at an average annual rate
of eight percent.
103
Such processes have had a profound impact on how Chinese citizens
from all backgrounds live their everyday lives. Compared to the Mao era, people’s
expectations in terms of their material well being and the way they define themselves in
relation to others have also been transformed.

104
As anthropologist Yan Yunxiang notes, under Mao consumption in China was
characterized by few choices and similar patterns among nearly the entire population; it
also lingered at a basic subsistence level for thirty years.
104
Socialist asceticism was
enforced through exhortations for “hard work and plain living” and through attacks on
any pursuit of material comforts or luxury as evidence of “corrupt bourgeois culture.”
105

In contrast, the Deng era reformers sought to repudiate this mode of thinking and did so
not only through policy reforms but also through ideological work that encouraged
citizens to make money as well as spend it. As mentioned earlier, the countryside first
benefited from these reversals, and in the early years of the reforms rural residents were
quick to build new houses, buy new machinery, and enjoy better food. Urban consumers
quickly followed suit starting in the mid-eighties and soon magazines and newspapers,
including the People’s Daily – the mouthpiece of the Communist Party – featured
stories on “modern” citizens enjoying similarly “modern lifestyles” with major
appliances and other creature comforts.
106

China’s booming economy and spending on domestic consumption were
temporarily slowed as a result of the government crackdown on Tiananmen Square on
June 4, 1989. However, after Deng Xiaoping’s “Southern Tour” in 1992 – in which he
promoted further marketization of the economy and “socialism with Chinese
characteristics” – economic development, consumer spending, and making money as a
central goal became prominent features of Chinese society. Deng’s tour and the
escalated economic reforms that followed were as much about economic as political
pragmatism. As many have observed, since 1992 “consumerism has become the

105
dominant ideology in Chinese society and one of the means available to the Communist
Party to maintain its legitimacy.”
107

This decades-long “consumer revolution” in China has had several consequences,
especially since the mid-nineties. After the Third Plenum of the Fourteenth Party
Congress in 1993, the regional disparities discussed earlier were exacerbated, and urban
inequality also grew as the “iron rice bowl” for workers was “smashed” and massive
lay-offs and unemployment ensued.
108
As work units began focusing on productivity
and efficiency, they in turn reduced many of the social welfare benefits formerly
guaranteed to their employees. When the responsibilities and resources of the work unit
shifted, the work unit also became less and less associated with state-controlled
consumption.
109
Furthermore, according to sociologist Deborah Davis, “as individuals
went about their daily routines they could ignore the importuning of state agents in
ways that were unthinkable during the first three decades of CCP rule,” even though
constraints remained in several areas, such as reproduction through the one-child
policy.
110
This separation of urban production and consumption – particularly as
housing, food, and other resources were increasingly commodified – meant greater
autonomy not only for urban residents, but also for rural peasants, who were able to
enter towns and cities to engage in business and labor, as mentioned earlier.
The decreased importance of the work unit in urban residents’ lives and the
gradual erosion of the power of the hukou system occurred simultaneously with the
creation and marketization of new forms of leisure and entertainment. With more
money and autonomy, urban residents also desired more “modern” ways to spend their
free time. Prior to the nineties, aside from outdoor parks there were very few public

106
areas for socializing. I recall that when I lived in Beijing from 1990 to 1992, getting
together with Chinese friends usually occurred in someone’s home, where an invitation
to “dinner” often meant spending the whole day as food was prepared, cooked, and
leisurely eaten. Occasionally, there were all-day outings to city parks or places of
historical interest.
The opening of the first McDonald’s and Pizza Hut in Beijing in 1990 generated
much excitement and interest on the part of everyday Chinese because it was something
new and “modern.”
111
By the mid-nineties all kinds of western fast food outlets and
chain restaurants, bowling alleys, bars, and karaoke venues had cropped up around the
city. Such places were not just indicative of increased foreign investment in China.
They enabled new opportunities for sociality and personal networking as well as greater
individual autonomy since socializing outside the home or work unit could take place
away from the purview of employers and sometimes meddlesome colleagues.
112
The
flood of foreign films, music, magazines, and images further influenced everyday
values and desires for new lifestyles.
These new modes of consuming in turn created new modes of status
differentiation, identity construction, and social polarization. When consumption was
severely constrained during the Mao era, one’s social status was primarily determined
by one’s class status, which was not based so much on material wealth but on political
correctness (though clearly those who had been wealthy suffered politically). This is not
to say that consumption was completely ignored and did not have status connotations,
however, as revealed in definitions of the “three big items” (da sanjian) that delineated
the most desirable consumer items in different eras. For example, in the sixties and

107
seventies, bicycles, wristwatches, and sewing machines constituted the da sanjian. In
the eighties, reflecting a rising standard of living, the “three big items” had morphed
into washing machines, color TVs, and refrigerators. By the nineties, these had changed
to telephones, air conditioners, and VCRs.
113
When I asked a friend in Beijing in 2006
what the “three bigs” were, she was at a loss for an answer, and finally replied that there
were so many goods and so much wealth in China that the da sanjian had become a
notion of the past.
According to Yan Yunxiang, “The most obvious change that consumerism has
wrought on Chinese society is its subversion of the existing socialist hierarchy….
Consumerism enables some people to redefine their social status in terms of
consumption and lifestyle.”
114
Indeed, identity construction and social status through
consumption are perhaps the most striking visual differences in the realm of people’s
everyday lives that have taken place since the eighties in the PRC. This first began in
the early eighties with the getihu, or “individual household” business men and women,
who although usually poorly educated and not very well off, early on were able to take
advantage of market reforms and acquire a lot of money relatively quickly. Their
voracious and competitive spending made them both despised and envied by nearly
every strata of society.
115

However, it is not just China’s nouveau riche that construct themselves through
conspicuous consumption. Starting in the mid-nineties a rising class of educated, private
entrepreneurs emerged, as did a group of young professional white-collar workers. In
particular, the influx into China of designer clothing boutiques and household
furnishing stores such as Ikea are meant to cater to this latter group, who define

108
themselves through following local and global trends in clothing fashions, personal
style, and consumer electronics. In a nation where the exchange of political rights for
material comforts has been solidified as state policy, consumer citizenship – the
expression of agency and identity through consumption practices
116
– has become for
many the primary means of expressing their place and worth in the Chinese nation.
117

From a “Society of Relative Comfort” to a “Harmonious Society”
China’s embrace of a “neo-liberal development model that identified personal
consumption as a primary driver of economic growth and individual consumer choice as
a spur to further efficiency and innovation” has meant that not everyone enjoys this
form of citizenship on equal terms.
118
As indicated by the urban to rural income
disparities cited earlier, many of China’s citizens – rural residents, rural-to-urban
migrants, and laid-off urban workers – are increasingly constrained or left out altogether
from participating in the modes of consumption that have come to define belonging,
success, and one’s “quality” in contemporary China.
Unfortunately, these disparities are by no means accidental. When Deng Xiaoping
set forth the goal of enabling ordinary people to achieve a “relatively comfortable life,”
he was explicitly referencing a classical-era text – The Record of Rites (Liji). As Lu
Hanlong notes, “This society of ‘relative comfort,’ where people pursued private
interests and gave priority to advancing family interests, was … considered morally
inferior to the society of ‘great equality’” that had preceded it.
119
For Deng and the other
reformers it was therefore seen as a middle ground, on the way towards equality for all,
and it was acknowledged that inequality would occur – “some must get rich first and

109
then others will follow” – and state-imposed laws would be necessary to regulate
people’s actions.
120
When in fact many did get rich but many others did not follow, the
government was forced to change course. In 2004, following a Xinhua news editorial
describing China at a “pivot point that will lead either to a ‘golden age of development,’
or a ‘contradictions-stricken age’ of chaos,” President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen
Jiabao put forth a vision of constructing a “harmonious society.”
121
Since then greater
efforts have been made to close the urban-rural divide, in particular by enacting policies
to ease the economic burden on China’s peasants – such as lifting a centuries-old
agricultural tax and eliminating tuition fees for rural schools – and to raise their incomes
in order to spur domestic consumption in rural areas.

The Construction/Consumption of Femininity in the Post-Mao Era
China’s “consumer revolution” has not only brought new forms of distinction and
discrimination based on social class or spatial separation; rather, in line with China’s
market reforms as a whole, it has had profound implications for men and women’s
status and for hegemonic notions of gender. As many feminist scholars in and outside of
China were quick to note at the earliest stages of the reforms, women’s position in
society and the discursive construction of gender quickly seemed to take “two steps
forward, one step back.”
122
Starting in the early eighties due to downsizing of
unprofitable state owned enterprises, many middle-aged urban women were the first to
be laid off, forced into early retirement (xiagang), or urged to “return home” in order to
leave jobs for men.
123
The discarding of “old” female workers along with the stagnant,
centrally-planned economy has been paralleled by the rise of an urban-based service

110
economy. As mentioned earlier, as a result there has arisen a range of entirely new
occupations that are segregated based on gender distinctions, and these have had
profound implications for both urban and rural women. As Zhang Zhen notes, in post-
socialist China, the rusted “iron rice bowl” has been replaced by the “rice bowl of
youth” (qingchunfan), a term referring to the trend in urban areas in which:
a range of new, highly paid positions have opened almost exclusively to
young women, as bilingual secretaries, public relations girls, and fashion
models. Youth and beauty are foremost, if not the only, prerequisites to
obtaining lucrative positions, in which the new ‘professionals’ often
function as advertising fixtures with sex appeal. The robust image of
vivacious, young female eaters of the rice bowl of youth symbolizes a
fresh labor force, a model of social mobility, and the rise of a consumer
culture endorsed by current official ideology—the ‘democracy of
consumption’ promoted to prevent social unrest since the suppression of
student movements in 1989.
124

This “rice bowl of youth” has emerged in tandem with the relatively new urban spaces
for commodity consumption mentioned earlier.
125
In high-end restaurants, bars, and
clubs, and in shopping malls filled with designer boutiques, young women trade their
looks for material comfort. Female university graduates as well are expected not only to
have brains but also beauty and they are at a disadvantage when competing with their
male counterparts, since they are often expected to have higher skills and to meet
certain height and weight standards.
126
In numerous service agencies that have emerged
in the reform era, such as real estate, young, educated, attractive urban women have
become – along with the establishments in which they are employed – signifiers of
Chinese cosmopolitan modernity. In post-socialist China’s teleology, they represent
progress and the future, in contrast to the anachronistic, “worn-out” laid-off middle-
aged female workers. The paradox is that just as China’s quest for modernization has

111
opened up new possibilities for women, their circumscribed place is justified in the
name of modernity.
While such consumption and commodification of female bodies in the workplace
represents a mode of sexual politics far removed from the Mao era, it has ties with both
China’s semi-colonial past and with what L.H.M. Ling has termed contemporary
“global hypermasculinity,” or the way in which the state’s “manly” pursuit of economic
development renders its citizens as “hyperfeminized:” subordinate and self-sacrificing
yet lacking a political voice.
127
Of course, it is not only young urban women that are
commodified in contemporary China but migrant women’s bodies as well. Ling adds
that “as the exemplars of hyperfeminized society, women become the hypermasculine
state’s most obvious target. East Asia’s economic growth was built on the backs of low-
wage, unskilled, young female labor.”
128
Similarly, Cindy Fan notes that in China,
“Increased consumerism, pent-up demand for urban services and urban development
have increased job opportunities for peasant migrants.”
129
Thus, as mentioned earlier,
young migrant women are funneled into gender-specific occupations, such as domestic
work, service work, or sex work, where their labor is desired and consumed precisely
because it is feminized and sexualized. While currently nearly 38 percent of urban
women are engaged in so-called “female jobs,” nearly 56 percent of female migrants are
employed in the lower strata of such jobs that entail long hours and minimal pay.
130

Not surprisingly, the rise of a gender-segregated labor market to fill the consumer
demands of a primarily urban populace has arisen hand-in-hand with extremely
essentialized notions of gender in popular and official discourse in contemporary China.
Such gender construction is at radical odds with its Maoist precursor, and intentionally

112
so. Like so many arenas in China that have undergone substantial reorganizing since
1978, current gender ideologies have evolved through the invocation of deeply
engrained patriarchal cultural values that place women in subordinate positions to men
and a simultaneous concerted effort by the Chinese state and many of its citizenry to
reject and bury its Maoist past.
Mao famously declared that women “hold up half the sky,” and during the Mao
era women’s participation in the labor force was assumed to ensure their emancipation.
Though there is still debate about to what degree Chinese women were truly liberated
under Mao and to what extent their liberation was “postponed,” most agree that
women’s equality hinged on their adherence to male norms.
131
Such state-regulated
gender “equality” was extremely visible during the Cultural Revolution, when large
numbers of women participated in the public realms of not only labor but also politics.
As molding the collective and expunging individuality became paramount, class
struggle was preeminent and this meant gender was a non-issue. As a result, femininity
or any assertion of a feminine identity was virtually eliminated, and there arose what
anthropologist Mayfair Yang has called an “‘erasure of gender and sexuality’ (xingbie
mosha) in public space.”
132
This “gender erasure” was manifested in androgynous styles
for women, including baggy clothing, cropped or braided hair, and cosmetic-free
faces.
133
In public, women maintained a body comportment, speaking style, and
mannerisms that adhered to dominant masculine standards. Also, showing interest in
love or sex was treated either as “the shameful expression of a warped mind or as
evidence of bourgeois individualism and detrimental to collective welfare.”
134

113
Perhaps the most iconic image of women from this time is that of the fabled “Iron
Girls,” a group of young female workers from the model Dazhai agricultural brigade
who were industrious, brave, technically skilled, and who symbolized the boundless
energy and unswerving enthusiasm necessary to build socialist China.
135
They
represented the Maoist slogan that “The times have changed, whatever a man can do, a
woman can do too.” These women earned their model status through their claim not
only to carry forward the revolution but also through working “as hard or harder than
men.”
136
As Marilyn Young so astutely points out in her discussion of the Iron Girls,
Chinese Marxists, just like many western liberals, embraced a notion of universal
humanity where “the universal human is male—a class-conscious revolutionary for the
one, an autonomous individual for the other, but in neither case a woman.”
137

In the post-Mao era, the rise of a consumer culture in China has been paralleled by
heightened notions of essentialized gender, where women’s ‘natural’ qualities and
abilities (or lack thereof) relegate them to certain segments of society and the
economy.
138
With the reforms of the late seventies and the lifting of state-imposed
androgyny, many women were eager to assert their own identity as women, most often
through donning feminine fashions, cosmetics, permed hair, and other outward
manifestations of dominant modes of femininity. As a political strategy and as a method
to reclaim a buried selfhood they felt had been subsumed by Maoist rhetoric, this was
certainly understandable. At the same time, in public discourse of the early eighties as a
way to repudiate the Mao era and in particular the Cultural Revolution, the Iron Girls
were mocked as disgusting, an embarrassment, and like much of the Maoist past, out of
line with human nature. A public discourse emphasizing “natural” gender distinctions

114
based on biological traits thus became prominent, with women constructed as having
special charms, grace, and gentleness.
139
Since then, discursive constructions of
essentialized gender can be found in both popular and official discourse in everything
from tracts on youth sex and dating to medical advice.
140

However, the most noticeable forms of these essentialized gender distinctions –
mirroring the high visibility of the Iron Girls in state propaganda of the mid-1960s – are
found in the mediated images of women in the advertisements, beauty magazines, and
television shows and films that have proliferated as a result of China’s consumer
revolution. As Elisabeth Croll noted of early 1980s China, “On the billboards the
posters of the model worker have been replaced by new posters portraying women as
consumers in the company of washing machines, cooking pots, watches, televisions and
toothpaste or cosmetics.”
141
However, since the late eighties and especially the nineties,
the representation of Chinese women has transformed from that of cute, coy, or delicate,
to increasingly provocative and highly sexualized. In advertisements young maternal
figures might still accompany washing machines, but their seductive and scantily clad
counterparts are just as likely to be found cradling a bottle of Johnny Walker or a
Motorola mobile phone.
Of course, these images are both highly alluring and vastly out of reach for many
women. Still, they serve a pedagogical role about the meaning of gender in
contemporary China. In Harriet Evans’ words, they are “important indicators of the
ways in which state and market, often indistinguishable in the way they operate, make
use of—and exclude—women’s bodies for commercial and political purposes.
Together, they are the most obvious and omnipresent form of the commercialization of

115
women’s bodies.”
142
Currently, the mediated images of Chinese women are linked to
global images of female sexuality, and at the same time the image of the “beautiful
Chinese woman also clearly invokes the global consumerism within which the Chinese
market is situated.”
143

Furthermore, in China the commodification of women’s bodies in both the
workplace and the realm of representations is indicative of local and global intersections
and understandings of gender and labor. Just as the labor force presents limited options
for certain women, mainstream constructions of gender “collapse the possibilities of
femininity and femaleness into a composite image that is urban, educated, content,
materially successful and beautiful.”
144

Thus, certain notions of what it means to be a modern woman in China today
erase others, and certain women, especially female rural-to urban-migrants, are erased
from constructions of ideal femininity. In this regard, women’s bodies become both
object to be consumed and project to be improved. As will be further explored in
chapter three, consumer practices and associated notions of essentialized gender – and
increasingly those associated with the consumption of technology – thus become a
crucial means for migrant women to claim a “modern,” female identity.

Telecommunications Development in the Reform Era
China’s shift toward a consumer society has paralleled and been constitutive of
the staggering growth in telecommunications that has taken place during the reform era.
Maoist modernity – with its unswerving faith in a teleological drive towards a
communist utopia – recognized the importance of technological development. Although

116
Mao Zedong has periodically been characterized as “anti-technology,” Mao stated in
1958, “We must summon our effort to learn technology so as to accomplish the great
technological revolution history has left to us.”
145
For Mao, however, technology was
most associated with industrialization that would be achieved through mass
mobilization of the productive forces. For this reason, in the First Five-Year Plan of the
People’s Republic, posts and telecommunications were “given a back seat” to heavy
industry, and such priorities set a precedent for relatively little investment and sluggish
development of the nation’s post service and telecommunications sector.
146
During the
Mao era, the state-owned telecommunications system was highly centralized and quasi-
military, and almost no ordinary citizens had a telephone

.
147
Instead, the
“communication needs of the elite, especially the party apparatus, were given top
priority and ensured by a system of private networks, courier services, red telephones,
and preferential connection.”
148
In 1950, China’s teledensity (the number of telephones
per 100 persons) was .05;
149
by 1975 it was only .33 (a rate achieved in the U.S. by the
late 19
th
century).
150

Beginnings
When Deng Xiaoping came to power in the late seventies, China’s
telecommunications sector had several problems, including outdated technology, poor
management, and inadequate capital investment.
151
However, Deng and his fellow
reformers were well aware that investment in telecommunications and transportation
were crucial to economic growth and raising people’s standard of living. Thus, in the
Sixth Five-Year Plan for 1981-1985, the development of China’s telecommunications
industry was given top priority.
152
From the eighties to the early nineties, the expansion

117
of telecommunications was extraordinary due to overall economic growth, increasing
demand, and the central government’s support. From 1985 to 1990, telecommunications
services grew at an annual rate double that of China’s soaring gross domestic product,
which averaged 10 to 12 percent annually.
153
From 1990 to the beginning of 1993, the
growth rate was four times that of GDP.
154
In 1980, there were 4.1 million fixed-line
telephones in China, for a teledensity of .4.
155
By 1990, there were 12.73 million fixed-
line phones in the nation, and the teledensity had risen to approximately 1.2 percent.
156

Despite the government’s goal that ordinary citizens would be able to enjoy
telecommunications, during the eighties telephones continued to be configured as a
device for the elite. Although installation rates previously had been very low, in 1980
China’s Posts and Telecommunications Bureaus began to charge 2,000 yuan (today
about $260) per installation (an exorbitant amount), and by the end of the decade this
fee had increased to 6000 yuan and in some places was even as much 20,000. Despite
the outrageous cost, many people were willing to pay and to wait up to two years to get
a phone installed in their home.
157
Of course, millions could not afford such fees, and
when I lived in Beijing in the early nineties it was not uncommon for two or even three
families to share the same line. Furthermore, like much of China’s development, urban
households were favored over rural households in the growth of telephony. In 1990, the
urban to rural ratio of fixed-line phones in homes was 3.7:1, and only .29 percent of the
total rural population had landlines in their homes.
158
Eastern coastal regions and
Special Economic Zones also prevailed: in 1992 the seven most developed eastern cities
and SEZs comprised 51 percent of the fixed-line telephones in the nation while the

118
seven poorest and least developed provinces (all inland) accounted for just five
percent.
159

Cell phone use in China at this time was even more limited and stratified. The
nation’s first analog mobile phone service was established in Guangzhou in 1987, but
the growth in mobile phone subscriptions in China, as in much of the rest of the world
at this time, was quite slow. By 1992, China had 176,943 mobile phone subscriptions
out of a population of 1.17 billion.
160
This small number was due to lack of
infrastructure and astronomical fees. In the early and mid-nineties, a cell phone and a
registration could cost as much as $4,000, which has been estimated to be the highest in
the world at that time relative to per capita income.
161

“Market Socialism” and the Telecommunications Revolution
As with China’s development in general, the expansion of telecommunications,
and the real diffusion of mobile phones, escalated after Deng Xiaoping’s Southern Tour
and the government’s subsequent all-out embrace of the “socialist market economy.” As
mentioned earlier, starting from the mid-nineties China sought to more rapidly
transition from a centrally-planned to a market-oriented economy and from an agrarian
to an industrialized, urban society. As Mueller and Tan note in their discussion of
China’s telecommunications growth, the “diffusion of information technology
throughout the country cannot be understood in isolation from China’s industrialization.
Both processes are in turn closely related to the penetration of the Chinese economy by
market forces.”
162

While the years prior to 1992 are often characterized as the first stage of China’s
telecommunications development in the reform era, the period after 1992 is

119
distinguished by three subsequent stages that have each greatly contributed to the
integration of telephony into people’s everyday lives. In the second stage, the
government took the first steps toward deregulation, when the monopoly of the Ministry
of Post and Telecommunications (MPT) was challenged by the establishment in 1994 of
China Unicom, a joint venture of three different government ministries and 13 large
state-owned companies.
163
China Unicom came into being after a protracted battle
between various ministries and bureaucrats and, as Mueller and Tan so astutely point
out, only when the economic concerns of the coalition that challenged the MPT:
were successfully linked to the party’s ideological and policy commitment
to high-tech industries. The Chinese leadership has always based its
enthusiasm for the ‘information superhighway’ on a technocratic view of
electronics as the key to global economic and political power and
information technology as the solution to institutional problems of
reform.
164

When China Unicom formed, the State Council asked the MPT to restructure its
organization and to become a regulator that would guard the interests of the state and
the public. A separate branch of the MPT then created China Telecom as a means of
competing with China Unicom. However, under a bizarre and unfair regulatory
framework, China Telecom’s finances and planning were managed by the MPT, which
then enjoyed twin status as both an operator and a regulator. Of course, China Unicom
could not adequately compete with China Telecom or the MPT, which created many
obstacles to China Unicom’s development. Nonetheless, China Unicom had the support
of the central government, and its creation contributed to a viable telecommunications
market, especially in mobile telephony, as will be discussed below.

120
The third stage of China’s telecommunications development began in March 1998
when the Ministry of Information Industry (MII) was created through the merger of the
MPT and two other ministries, in preparation for joining the World Trade Organization.
With this institutional reorganization, for the first time in PRC history regulation and
operation functions were separated from one another.
165
One of the first actions of the
newly formed MII was to lower service fees. For example, international calls and
Internet service fees were reduced by 15-30 percent and 50 percent, respectively.
166
The
MII also drastically reformed the telecommunications industry. The virtual monopoly
that China Telecom had held on the telecommunications sector ended in February 1999
when China Telecom was divided into four companies. As a result, the original China
Telecom became a fixed-line provider, China Mobile was created for mobile
communications, Guoxing handled wireless paging, and China Satellite was established
for satellite communications.
167
China Unicom focused on cellular telephony, receiving
all of China Mobile’s CDMA operations and networks. In March 1999, China Unicom
merged with Guoxing.
168

The fourth stage of China’s telecommunications development began in 2001, after
China joined the WTO.
169
This stage has seen further liberalization of China’s
telecommunications market, a reduction in fees for various types of calling and services,
and an increase in value-added services.
170
China currently has two main fixed-line
providers, China Netcom and China Satellite, and two main mobile phone providers,
China Mobile and China Unicom, though there has been much talk of a pending
government restructuring of the telecommunications industry.

121
As a result of all of these changes and many people’s rising standard of living,
throughout the nineties and into the new millennium China’s fixed-line telephony
continued to grow at an amazing rate. By 1998 China’s teledensity had reached 10.64
percent, reflecting growth rates in previous years that sometimes had surpassed 50
percent.
171
By the early 2000s most people in urban areas had private phones in their
homes.
172
By 2007 China had roughly 365 million fixed-line telephone subscribers,
with a teledensity of 27.8.
173
Though urban areas had more than double the number of
fixed-line phones in the countryside, rural areas have also seen tremendous growth
during this period. Such growth was particularly evident after 1996 when the
government implemented the “Village-to-Village Telephone” (Cuncuntong Dianhua)
project to try to bring universal service to rural areas. The result was an annual growth
rate of telephone subscriptions in rural areas of over 30 percent, surpassing the rate of
urban areas.
174
This program was amended in 2004 in order for the most remote villages
to have at least two telephones, one in the village committee office and one in a public
“call bar.”
175
Though in China the growth of fixed-line phones has been tremendous,
over the last decade the expansion of mobile telephony has been astounding.

The Mobile Revolution
The growth of mobile telephony in China must be seen within the context of
China’s particular economic and telecommunications policies. It should also be
understood in the larger context of the worldwide growth in mobile telephony – there
are currently 3.3 billion mobile phone subscriptions in the world, about half of the
earth’s population.
176
Particularly in developing countries, the phenomenal expansion of

122
cell phones appears to reflect these countries “leap-frogging” from minimal fixed-line
teledensity to large-scale cellular phone penetration.
177

As mentioned above, prior to the Chinese government’s protracted efforts at
restructuring the telecommunications industry, cell phone usage in China was very
limited. After China Unicom was created in 1994, however, mobile phone subscriptions
began to grow exponentially. In 1993 there were 632, 268 cell phone subscriptions; in
1994 this more than doubled to 1,567,780; in 1995 the number grew to 3,629, 416; and
in 1996 there were 6,852,752.
178
By August of 1998 China had 20 million mobile phone
subscribers, the largest number in the world.
179

In the nineties, mobile phones were largely communication devices for China’s
government elite and rising entrepreneurial class. Throughout the mid-nineties cell
phones cost around $3,000, and as mentioned earlier, service was concentrated in
China’s wealthier coastal provinces in line with China’s development strategy. In fact,
throughout much of the nineties pagers (bipiji), not cell phones, were the most
prominent form of mobile communication technology for everyday citizens. Pagers
were introduced into China in the early eighties but were used only in a limited number
of cities and by a relatively small number of subscribers until the late eighties.
However, the technology finally took off in 1991 when paging services with Chinese
characters became available.
180
In 1994, approximately 2000 cities had pager stations
and there were more than 10 million subscribers.
181
When I lived in Beijing that year it
seemed that bipiji where everywhere, and people had devised very systematic and
creative methods for sending messages in Chinese. The number of pager subscribers

123
peaked in 2000, with 50 million, but by the beginning of 2005 had declined to only 3.6
million.
182

The reason that pager subscriptions started to taper off during the 2000s was due
to the increasing availability and decreased costs of mobile phones. In 2000, China had
85.3 million mobile phones (called dage, or “big brother” at the time); by 2002 the
number of subscriptions had increased to 206 million; in 2004 the number was nearly
335 million; and in 2006 there were 461 million.
183
As of February 2008, the number
was 556.23 million, nearly 42 percent of the entire population. These numbers reflect
rising demand, expansion of service, decreased user costs as a result of the telecom
sector restructuring and reforms discussed above, and expansion of both the foreign and
domestic mobile phone market. Such figures should also be seen in the context of the
growth of Internet users in China, from 9 million in 1999, to nearly 80 million in 2003,
to over 220 million currently, the largest number in the world.
184

Mobile Phone Use in China
China’s wireless phone market is currently dominated by two mobile phone
operators, China Mobile and China Unicom, and both of these companies provide a
range of services and calling plans for their customers. China Mobile is the largest
mobile phone operator in the world and the nation’s market leader, with roughly 68
percent of China’s mobile phone subscriptions. China Unicom is the third largest
mobile phone provider in the world and carries most of the rest of the nation’s mobile
subscriptions, though small regional providers do exist. As China’s mobile phone
market has grown, certain distinctive (though not wholly unique) traits of mobile phone

124
use in China have emerged. These include particular pricing and service plans, the role
of SMS, “Little Smart,” and uneven development.
185

Pricing, Plans, and Prestige
Most mobile phone subscribers in China use pre-paid services: as of 2005, 90
percent of all cell phone subscriptions used this form of payment,
186
and pre-paid phone
cards currently make up 70 percent of China Mobile’s business.
187
As elsewhere, pre-
paid services in China are valued for their flexibility and convenience. Cards come most
often in increments of 50 to 100 yuan (approximately $6.50 to $13.00), and vendors
selling pre-paid cards are ubiquitous in supermarkets, outdoor newsstands, and mobile
phone stores. Pre-paid cards usually also offer a variety of pricing plans, including bulk-
rate text messaging and voice calling where the caller pays but the receiver is not
charged.
Mobile phone calling plans in China, however, are not merely innocuous
economic configurations based on rational market forces. Like so many other products
and services that have arisen in the past decade or so, they bear distinct attributes
intended to bestow status and differentiate among users. One of the most noticeable
examples of this distinction derives from mobile phone numbers themselves. First, cell
phone numbers reveal whether a person is a China Mobile or China Unicom subscriber,
with more prestige going to the former. China Mobile is the incumbent in the mobile
phone market, and as such it tends to offer better coverage and more service options in
most areas. Second, one’s number also reveals the type of service plan one has. For
example, China Mobile’s “GoTone brand” provides subscribers with a variety of
services, including international roaming, mobile Internet, mobile banking, MMS, GPS,

125
and a “mobile secretary.” Beyond phone services, GoTone, as the package for “high-
class customers,” also offers VIP clients “distinguished” airport service and a
professional style golf club.
188
On China Mobile’s website, the company boasts
GoTone’s “intangible assets” that are “symbolized in success, self-confidence, and high
taste.”
189
The blurb for the service even indirectly invokes the language of quality
(suzhi) through comparing GoTone customers’ level and quality of “development” to its
own.
190
This information is not only available to subscribers or those who have perused
China Mobile’s promotional materials. Because it is widely known that GoTone uses
the 134 through 139 prefixes, these three-digit prefixes confer status on their users.
191

Regardless of provider or service plan, one’s mobile phone number itself is a mark
of prestige. Unlike in the U.S. where numbers are usually randomly assigned to a cell
phone subscriber, in China SIM cards with mobile numbers must be purchased
separately in order to use a phone. Since mobile numbers in China are rather long (11
digits), numbers that have repeating digits are more expensive because these types of
numbers will be easier to remember. Numbers are also more costly based on whether
they are lucky or unlucky. A phone number with a large amount of eights, for example,
will be more expensive, and again confer status, since eight is an auspicious number in
Chinese culture. On the other hand, a number ending in four (a homonym for death in
Chinese) will be inexpensive and possibly create discomfort for a caller.
Short Messaging Service
SMS, or short messaging service, which is also known as text messaging, is an
extremely popular form of mobile communication in China. SMS allows for text-based
messages and visual images to be transmitted. Unlike in Japan, text messaging is not

126
used in China in order to preserve the sanctity of public space. Instead, one major
reason for the popularity of SMS is that it is extremely cheap. One message costs .10
yuan or about 1.3 U.S. cents (compared to .40 yuan for a local voice call). As
mentioned above, bundles of text messages are often offered as part of a service plan,
bringing the cost down even more.
In China, pre-written text messages are extremely popular, and these messages
often contain jokes, riddles, holiday greetings, or erotica. They can be copied out of
inexpensive books that are widely available or downloaded from the Internet and sent to
a mobile phone though Internet portals such as Sina or Sohu. Sending text messages
during holidays has now become obligatory in China, especially during the Mid-
Autumn Festival in October and Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) in January or
February. During holidays people often send pre-written messages in a manner similar
to sending a greeting card via the regular mail.
SMS is a major generator of revenue for China’s mobile phone providers. In 2004,
217.76 billion text messages were sent, up roughly 58 percent from the previous year
and generating $2.62 billion.
192
In 2007, 592.1 billion text messages were sent, for an
average of 1.6 billion/day and a daily revenue of 160 million yuan (roughly $21
million).
193
During the Spring Festival period in 2006, 12.6 billion messages were
transmitted, in 2007 the number was 15.2 billion, and it was estimated that in 2008 17
billion text message greetings were sent.
194
All of the major Internet portals employ text
message writers who earn about one Chinese cent each time their message is
downloaded. These message writers can earn large sums of money, especially during
major holidays.

127
“Little Smart” (Xiaolingtong)
“Little Smart”, or xiaolingtong, is a less expensive mobile phone with limited
geographic mobility that became very popular among low-income populations in the
early 2000s.
195
It runs off of the fixed-line telephone system of China Netcom and
China Telecom and thus can only be used within the limits of a particular city. Little
Smart phones have fewer functions and the service is often of poor quality, but its usage
costs are about half that of regular cell phone service. For this reason it experienced
phenomenal growth between 1999 and 2006, when the number of Little Smart users
increased from 0.6 million to 91.1 million (it was not launched in Beijing until 2003).
During this time, the growth rate of Little Smart exceeded that of regular mobile phone
subscriptions. However, this rate began to fall in 2006. During my fieldwork in Beijing,
very few migrant workers that I knew had Little Smart service. This reflects both the
greater affordability of standard mobile phones in recent years, the substandard quality
of Little Smart service, and the stigma of Little Smart as “a poor man’s ICT.” It seems
that in the future Little Smart might go the way of the pager in China.
Uneven Mobile Development
Though the figures on China’s mobile phone growth are quite impressive, mobile
telephony, as in the early development of its fixed-line counterpart, has mushroomed in
China’s large urban centers and along the eastern coastal regions. For example, in
2001while the eastern region of the country had a cell phone penetration rate of 19.30
per 100 people, China’s central and western regions had rates of 7.75 and 7.20,
respectively.
196
By the end of 2007, the penetration rate of mobile phones in China was
41.6 percent, with the majority of these still concentrated in big urban centers.
197

128
Indeed, mobile phones have now become a personal necessity for a vast majority
of China’s city residents. Cell phones seem to be everywhere, and seem to be used
everywhere in China’s cities such as Beijing. Because most Chinese do not use
voicemail, people rarely let their phone go unanswered, whether they are in an
important meeting, a movie theater, or a quiet restaurant. Loud mobile phone
conversations on public transportation are commonplace, but these are not necessarily
viewed as rude. Only slightly less ubiquitous than people holding cell phones are the
mobile phone shops that line the streets of Beijing’s upscale shopping districts and the
second-hand mobile phone markets found near migrant enclaves. Everywhere around
the city billboards display highly sexualized images of Chinese women or trendy youth
with a mobile as the ultimate signifier of urban cool. Radio and television shows,
Internet portals, and advertising companies all vie for attention on and through
individuals’ cell phones, and for those who don’t have the money to promote their
services by such legitimate means, spray painting one’s mobile number on walls or
sidewalks has become a new kind of guerrilla advertising.
Now that cities like Guangzhou, Beijing, and Shanghai have become relatively
saturated with mobile phones, however, the number of new subscriptions in these cities
is declining. This has caused China’s mobile operators to look to rural areas, where
teledensity is still only 12 percent, as a source of new growth. For example, China
Mobile added roughly 68 million new subscribers in 2007 and nearly half of these were
in rural areas.
198
Still, China’s countryside is vast with large disparities between more
well-off areas where mobile operators are likely to set their sights first, and
impoverished regions where many people do not have landlines. For this reason, mobile

129
phones are, at this moment and in particular for rural youth, largely configured as part
of an urban, cosmopolitan lifestyle.

Conclusion
It is perhaps surprising to realize that China has now been in a “post-Mao era” for
equally as long as the Great Helmsman’s policies ruled a quarter of the world’s
population. As this chapter has shown, however, this fact is surprising only until one
considers the vast changes that have occurred in China since the reforms began in the
late seventies. The transformations wrought by “socialism with Chinese characteristics”
have been as profound, and for some no less traumatic, than the endless campaigns and
societal and political reorganizations undertaken to mold “new socialist men” under
Mao.
Yet, amidst the designer boutiques, sports cars, and luxury housing that now
dominate China’s large cities like Beijing, rural-to-urban migrants, constrained by
China’s rigid hukou system and discriminated against due to their rural origin, continue
to strive for a better life and to partake in the fruits of China’s various “revolutions.”
The remainder of this dissertation will examine how one particular segment of this
population – rural-to-urban migrant women – make meaning, enrich their lives, and at
times even reinforce their subordination through their engagement with mobile phones.

130
Chapter Two Endnotes

1. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was launched by Mao Zedong in
1966 as an effort to reconsolidate power and to purge the Party of what he called
“bourgeois” and “rightist elements.” It resulted in wide-scale political and social chaos,
and in many cases violent struggles between various Red Guard factions. Numerous
people were publicly humiliated, beaten, and/or jailed, and it is estimated that tens of
thousands of people were killed. Although several sinologists demarcate the Cultural
Revolution as lasting from 1966 to 1969, the post-Mao Chinese leadership marked the
official end with the death of Chairman Mao and subsequent trial of the Gang of Four in
1976. This discursive construction of the “ten years of chaos” allowed the new
leadership to establish a clean break with the chaotic past and declare itself the
legitimate leaders of a new era.

2. Khan and Riskin, Inequality and Poverty, 3.

3. Gries and Rosen, “Popular Protest and State Legitimation,” 1.

4. Potter and Potter, China’s Peasants, 296.

5. The baojia system is discussed in Wang, Organizing Through Division, 34-35.
Unless otherwise noted, the information in the following discussion is based on Zhao,
“Rural-to-Urban Migration in China.” A detailed account of the beginnings of the
hukou system under Mao can be found in Cheng and Seldon, “Origins and
Consequences” as well as Wang, Organizing Through Division.

6. Knight and Song, Rural-Urban Divide, 8.

7. The two major exceptions include the disastrous “Great Leap Forward” of
1958-1960, when Mao’s campaign to transform China rapidly from an agrarian to an
industrialized society brought many farmers to urban centers to take jobs in factories as
part of the push for industrialization. When this campaign ended in failure, these
temporary workers were sent back to the countryside. It is estimated that as a result of
Great Leap policies over 30 million people died of starvation, primarily in rural areas.
For an account of the Great Leap in relation to hukou policy see Cheng and Seldon,
“Origins and Consequences.” The second exception was during the Great Proletarian
Cultural Revolution, when beginning in 1968, in order to quell some of the chaos
caused by zealous Red Guards, Mao sent urban youth to the countryside to “learn” from
poor peasants. As Potter and Potter point out, rather than create greater understanding
between rural and urban residents, this policy exacerbated resentment and prejudice
between the two groups. See Potter and Potter, China’s Peasants, 303.

8. Solinger, Contesting Citizenship,” 9.

131

9. Potter and Potter, China’s Peasants, 298.

10. Zhang, “Spatiality and Urban Citizenship,” 315.

11. Potter and Potter, China’s Peasants, 300.

12. Cohen, “Cultural and Political Inventions.”

13. Ibid., 154.

14. Potter and Potter, China’s Peasants, 304.

15. Ibid., 307-310.

16. Khan and Riskin, Inequality and Poverty, 4.

17. Li, “Labor Migration and Income Distribution,” 305.

18. Khan and Riskin, Inequality and Poverty, 5.

19. French, “In Chinese Boomtown.”

20. Khan and Riskin, Inequality and Poverty, 8.

21. Ibid., 4.

22. Khan and Riskin, “China’s Household Income and its Distribution,” 358.

23. Xinhua, “Backgrounder: Challenges in China’s Rural Development.”

24. Knight and Song, Rural-Urban Divide, 12-13.

25. Zhao, “Rural-to-Urban Migration in China,” 21-22.

26. Huang, “Divided Gender, Divided Women,” 95.

27. Fan, “Migration and Gender,” 425.

28. Tan, “Leaving Home,” 248.

29. “Peripheral Citizens.”

30. Xinhua, “Beijing’s Population Exceeds 17.4 Million.”

132

31. Most scholars of China’s internal migration find it useful to distinguish
between temporary, non-hukou migration, which is called “floating” (hence, the
“floating population”), and permanent, hukou migration (qianyi). While the percentage
of official migrants in China is relatively small, the movement back and forth between
the countryside and cities of unofficial, temporary migrants seeking relatively short-
term or seasonal employment has grown steadily since the reforms began. See Solinger,
Contesting Citizenship.

32. See, for example, Zhang, “Contesting Crime, Order, and Migrant Spaces.”

33. Mallee, “Migration, Hukou and Resistance,” 139.

34. Khan and Riskin, “China’s Household Income and its Distribution,” 375.
These authors also note the income disparity among the migrant population, in
particular between those who are entrepreneurs and those who are laborers.

35. See, for example, Wang, “Nongmingong de ‘Banchengshihua’ Wenti.” On the
spatial separation of migrants see Zhang, Strangers in the City; See also Fan and
Taubmann, “Migrant Enclaves in Large Chinese Cities.”

36. Liudong Baozhangbu Diaocha.

37. There have been numerous discussions about these problems both in the
academic and popular press. For a recent survey, see Li, Nongmingong Liudong
Guochengzhong.

38. Zhang, Strangers in the City, especially chapter 7.

39. Zhao, Rural-to-Urban Migration in China,” 25.

40. Wang, Organizing Through Division, 191. It should be noted that Sun Zhigang
was a college graduate, which some have surmised is the reason his case generated such
outrage.

41. Congressional-Executive Committee on China, “China’s Household
Registration System.”

42. Wang, Organizing Through Division, 193.

43. Ibid., 187.

44. People’s Daily, “Residency Reforms to Allow Better Flow of Laborers.”

45. Li, “Wo Guo Chengshihua he Liudong Renkou,” 180.

133

46. Wang, Organizing Through Division, 189.

47. Tan, “Nushing Liudong yu Xingbie Pingdeng,” 246.

48. Knight and Song, Rural-Urban Divide, 13.

49. Wang, Organizing Through Division, 26.

50. Fan, “Migration and Gender ,” 423.

51. Fan, Ibid., 425; Tan, “Leaving Home,” 248.

52. Fan, Ibid., 427; Tan, Ibid., 248.

53. Song, “Role of Women in Labor Migration,” 85.

54. Fan, “Migration and Gender,” 429; Tan, “Leaving Home,” 248.

55. Tan, “Nüxing Liudong,” 241.

56. Fan, “Out to the City,” 187.

57. Beynon, “Dilemmas of the Heart,” 133.

58. Ibid., 133; Gaetano, “Filial Daughters,” 46.

59. Tan, “Leaving Home,” 249. See also Beynon, “Dilemmas of the Heart,” 133;
Gaetano, “Filial Daughters,” 46.

60. Gaetano, “Off the Farm,” 140; Jacka, Rural Women,” 77; Lee, Gender and the
South China Miracle, 136.

61. Beynon, “Dilemmas of the Heart,” 135; Zhang, “Interplay of Gender, Space,
and Work,” 193.

62. Fan, “Out to the City,” 196-197.

63. Ibid.

64. Murphy, Migrant Labor is Changing Rural China, 173.

65. Huang, “Divided Gender, Divided Women,” 95.

134

66. Gaetano, “Filial Daughters,” 52.

67. Tan, “Nüxing Liudong,” 240.

68. Fan, “Migration and Gender,” 435.

69. Personal interview, Beijing, April 5, 2007.

70. Song, “Role of Women in Labor Migration;” Tan, “Nüxing Liudong,” 242.

71. Song, Ibid., 78; for a recent survey, see Xia, “Liudong Renkou Gongzi Shouru.

72. Wang, “Gendered Migration and the Migration of Genders,” 237.

73. Fan, “Migration and Gender,” 436; Zhang, “Interplay of Gender, Space, and
Work,” 191.

74. Zhang, “Interplay of Gender, Space, and Work,” 191.

75. Song, “Role of Women in Labor Migration;” Gaetano, “Filial Daughters,” 55.

76. Song, Ibid, 95.

77. Solinger, Contesting Citizenship, 202.

78. Pun, Made in China, 121.

79. Fan, “Migration and Gender,” 200.

80. See, for example, Sun “Indoctrinization, Fetishization.”

81. Tan, “Leaving Home,” 252.

82. Mallee, “Migration, Hukou and Resistance,” 139.

83. Tan, “Leaving Home,” 251.

84. See, for example, Beynon, “Dilemmas of the Heart;” Fan, “Out to the City.”

85. See, for example, Song, “Role of Women in Labor Migration.”

86. Beynon, “Dilemmas of the Heart,” 139.

87. Goldstein, Liang, and Goldstein, “Migration, Gender, and Labor Force,” 228.

135

88. Yan “Spectralization of the Rural,” 579.

89. Kipnis, “Suzhi: A Keyword Approach,” 304.

90. Ibid., 298.

91. Ibid. As Kipnis notes on p. 301, “education for quality” is not the same as
“quality education” or the quality of education, which is translated as jiaoyu zhiliang.

92. Ibid., 297.

93. Ibid., 304.

94. See, for example, Lei, “Rural Taste, Urban Fashions.” Online forums (BBS)
have also become a place for urbanites to discuss their disdain for migrants. See for
example the forum for China Youth Daily (Zhongguo Qingnian Bao)
(http://bbs.cyol.com).

95. Goldstein, Liang, and Goldstein, “Migration, Gender, and Labor Force, 228;
Song, “Role of Women in Labor Migration,” 85.

96. Beynon, “Dilemmas of the Heart,” 137-138.

97. Zhang, “Interplay of Gender, Space, and Work,” 193.

98. “Peripheral Citizens.”

99. Tan Shen, personal correspondence, Beijing, July 20, 2005.

100. “Peripheral Citizens;” see also Chu and Yang, “Mobile Phones and New
Migrant Workers;” Law and Peng, “Use of Mobile Phones.”

101. Lu, “To be Relatively Comfortable,” 124.

102. Davis, “A Revolution in Consumption,” 1.

103. Asian Development Bank, “Reducing Inequalities in China.”

104. Yan, “Politics of Consumerism,” 163.

105. Ibid., 164.

106. Ibid., 166.

136

107. Ibid., 167.

108. Davis, “A Revolution in Consumption,” 17.

109. Ibid., 11.

110. Ibid.

111. I was in Beijing for both of these openings and the crowds were enormous.

112. Davis, “A Revolution in Consumption,” 12-13.

113. Nearly every Chinese adult can recite some form of the “three big items”
over the decades. These examples come from Yan, “Politics of Consumerism,” 170.
However, Lu designates microwave ovens, stereos, and air conditioners as the “big
three” for the nineties, “To be Relatively Comfortable,” 136.

114. Yan, “Politics of Consumerism,” 179.

115. Ibid., 180-181.

116. On definitions and debates regarding consumer citizenship see Banet-Weiser,
Kids Rule! chapter one; see also Canclini, Citizens and Consumers.

117. Invoking consumer citizenship is certainly not meant to minimize the
nationalism expressed by many Chinese citizens when they feel that China’s rights as a
nation have been violated or when they perceive China to have lost face as a result of
actions by other nations. Examples include the protests outside the American embassy
in Beijing after the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, and
riots all across China in 2005 after it was learned that new Japanese school textbooks
glossed over war crimes committed by the Japanese military in China prior to 1949. On
the NATO bombing and Chinese nationalism, see Brownell, “Gender and Nationalism
in China.” The most recent example is the counter-protests by Chinese in and outside of
China over their anger at foreign protests of the global 2008 Olympic torch relay. In
each case, however, the fact that eventually the Chinese government has stepped in to
quell nationalistic fervor shows the limits for Chinese in expressing their political
citizenship.

118. Davis, “Urban Consumer Culture,” 692.

119. Lu, “To be Relatively Comfortable,” 125.

120. Ibid.

137

121. Marquand, “Stresses Spill Over into Riots.”

122. Riley, “Gender Equality in China,” 79.

123. See, for example, Robinson, “Of Women and Washing Machines;” see also
Jacka, “Back to the Wok.”

124. Zhang, “Mediating Time,” 94.

125. On the “rice bowl of youth” and gendered and classed service work see also
Hanser, “The Gendered Rice Bowl.”

126. See, for example, Wallis, “Chinese Women in the Official Chinese Press,”
102.

127. Ling, “Sex Machine: Global Hypermasculinity,” 280.

128. Ibid.

129. Fan, “Migration and Gender,” 435.

130. Tan, “Nüxing Liudong,” 242.

131. On the “postponement” of women’s liberation and equality, see Stacey,
Patriarchy and Socialist Revolution; see also Wolf, Revolution Postponed. For a
critique of their position, see Anagnost, “Transformations of Gender.”

132. Yang, “From Gender Erasure to Gender Difference,” 41.

133. Hooper, “Flower Vase and Housewife,” 170.

134. Evans, Women and Sexuality in China, 2.

135. For a more detailed account of the Iron Girls, see Honig and Hershatter,
Personal Voices, 23-26.

136. Young, “Chicken Little in China,” 236.

137. Ibid.

138. Evans, “Past, Perfect or Imperfect;” Honig and Hershatter, Personal Voices;
Hooper, “Flower Vase and Housewife.”

139. Honig and Hershatter, Personal Voices, 25.

138

140. For a detailed examination of continuity in gendered discourses between the
pre-Mao, Mao, post-Mao eras see Evans, Women and Sexuality in China.

141. Croll, Chinese Women Since Mao, 105.

142. Evans, “Marketing Femininity,” 221.

143. Ibid., 236.

144. Evans, “Fashions and Feminine Consumption,” 173.

145. Cited in Volti, Technology, Politics, and Society in China, 61.

146. Zhou, “History of Telecommunications in China,” 69.

147. Wan, “Sector Reform,” 161.

148. Zhou, “History of Telecommunications in China,” 69.

149. Liang and Zhang, “Services,” 99.

150. Zhou, “History of Telecommunications in China,” 73.

151. Wan, “Sector Reform,” 162.

152. Ibid., 75.

153. Xu and Liang, “Policy and Regulations” 128.

154. Mueller and Tan, China in the Information Age, 26.

155. Lee, “Telecommunications and Development,” 16.

156. Zhou, “History of Telecommunications in China,” 79.

157. Ibid., 82.

158. Harwit, “China’s Telecommunications Industry,” 185.

159. Lee, “Uneven Development,” 115.

160. Liang and Yang, “Networks,” 17.

139

161. Zhou, “History of Telecommunications in China,” 82.

162. Mueller and Tan, China in the Information Age, 13.

163. Xu and Liang, “Policy and Regulations,” 129. Unless noted, the discussion of
China Unicom comes from Xu and Liang, pp. 128-131. For a detailed description and
analysis of the establishment of China Unicom, see Mueller and Tan China in the
Information Age, chapter 3.

164. Mueller and Tan, China in the Information Age, 46.

165. Loo, “Telecommunications Reforms in China,” 705.

166. Ibid.

167. Wan, “Sector Reform,” 172.

168. Ibid., 173.

169. As this is being written, however, there are daily news articles regarding
China’s imminent restructuring of its telecommunications sector. See “China Orders 6
Telecoms to Merge Their Assets.”

170. Loo, “Telecommunications Reforms in China,” 707.

171. Liang and Zhang, “Services,” 99.

172. Lynch, “Nature and Consequences of China’s Unique Pattern,” 182.

173. China Ministry of Information Industry, 2007 National Communications
Industry Development Statistical Report (in Chinese).

174. Qiu, “(Dis)connecting the Pearl River Delta,” 139.

175. Li, “Phone Firms Tapping into Rural Areas.”

176. Murph, “Mobile Phone Subscriptions Hit 3.3 Billion.”

177. For a discussion of worldwide mobile phone growth broken down by region
see Castells et al., Mobile Communication and Society, chapter one.

178. Lynch, “Nature and Consequences of China’s Unique Pattern,” 183.

179. Liang and Yang, “Networks,” 17.

140

180. Qiu, “(Dis)connecting the Pearl River Delta,” 131-32.

181. Ibid., 133.

182. Castells et al., Mobile Communication and Society, 60.

183. China Ministry of Information Industry, http://www.mii.gov.cn.

184. Figures for 1999 and 2003 from China Internet Network Information Center,
http://www.cnnic.net.cn; Current figure, MacLeod, “China Vaults Past USA in Internet
Users.”

185. Prepaid phone cards, text messaging, and Little Smart are less expensive
forms of ICTs that are heavily used by what Cartier, Castells, and Qiu have termed the
“information have-less,” which they define as “an informational—and therefore social,
economic, and political—category” in China. The “have-less” include migrant workers,
laid-off employees of state enterprises, and retirees. See Cartier, Castells, and Qiu,
"Information Have-Less.” It should be noted, however, that text messaging and pre-paid
phone cards are widely used by many in China, not only the “have-less.”

186. Sangwan and Pau, Diffusion of Mobile Phones in China, 7.

187. http://www.chinamobile.com/en/mainland/products/review.html.

188. http://www.chinamobile.com/gotone/profile.

189. http://www.chinamobile.com/gotone/profile/intro.

190. Ibid.

191. This is perhaps somewhat akin to area codes in certain parts of the U.S., as in
Los Angeles, for example, where a 310 area code, which signifies a Westside residence,
carries more prestige than an 818 area code, which is used for phone numbers in the San
Fernando Valley.

192. Sangwan and Pau, Diffusion of Mobile Phones in China, 9.

193. “Chinese Expected to Send 17 Billion.”

194. Ibid.

141

195. Unless otherwise indicated, the following discussion comes from Qiu,
“Accidental Accomplishment of Little Smart,”). See also the discussion in Cartier,
Castells, and Qiu, “Information Have-Less,” 17-19.

196. Li and Wang, “China’s Telecommunications Universal Service,” 7.

197. China Ministry of Information Industry, 2007 National Communications
Industry Development Statistical Report.

198. Nystedt, “China Mobile Posts Strong 2007 Growth.”

142
CHAPTER THREE: “MY FIRST BIG URBAN PURCHASE:” MOBILE PHONE
AS METONYM FOR MODERNITY

Imagine: Wireless Freedom. Samsung T9 Mobile Phone Advertisement,
Beijing Subway, January 15, 2007.

It wasn’t until I left my village that I saw a mobile phone. We didn’t have
them there. My home had a landline. I’ve seen those, but it wasn't until
later when I left that I saw a mobile phone. Gu Xia, Beijing, November
13, 2006.

You see other people using a mobile phone and you feel envious. I see it
and feel like I want one now. As soon as I earn some money I want to buy
a mobile phone. Zhao Yanlin, Beijing, November 27, 2006.

The economic and social transformations that China has undergone in recent
decades, as well as the often disparate results of these transformations, are vividly
portrayed in the experience of Gu Xia and Zhao Yanlin, two women whom I first met
when they were enrolled as students in a three-month computer course at the Practical
Skills Training Center for Rural Women, located on the outskirts of Beijing.
1
Having
been recruited by Women’s Federation cadres from extremely poor villages in Shanxi
and Gansu Provinces, respectively, they were very grateful for the opportunity to go to
the school. At the same time, experiencing life in Beijing – even on the fairly isolated
school campus in a remote suburb – made them acutely aware of the differences
between their lives at home and the lifestyle and standard of living of many Beijing
residents. Like their peers at the school and nearly all of the migrant women I met in
Beijing, in conversations they framed their journey to the city as a chance to “gain new
skills” and “develop myself.” In contrast to Beijing, many said their home villages were
“not developed” and were “very poor.”

143
As these words demonstrate, China’s internal discourse of development –
development of the nation and of individuals – is a powerful force in young rural
women’s migration decisions. In this context, development is not only associated with
economic betterment and the acquisition of new knowledge, but also entry into an
imagined modernity – constructed as urban and in opposition to rural “tradition” – that
promises personal transformation and access to a new type of life. For rural women, to
“develop oneself” means, among other things, gaining “modern” skills that enable one
to earn a living doing something other than agriculture; participating in “modern”
consumer practices such as buying cosmetics and fashionable clothes; and enjoying new
forms of entertainment and communication. A mobile phone – as a communication tool
and a relatively new commodity, as a technological artifact and a fashion statement, and
as representative of the nation’s technological progress – encompasses all of these and
more.
In this chapter, I situate migrant women’s understanding and usage of cell phones
in the context of China’s discourses of development and modernity. To return to James
Carey’s metaphor of communication as transmission and ritual, one could say that as
“symbols of” and “symbols for” reality, mobile phones are constitutive of a world of
technological advancement, of “timeless time” and the “space of flows,” and of ultimate
convenience in communication. In the same way, cell phones as ritual have become part
of the “symbolic order,” with various socio-techno practices taking on a range of
meanings for different users. In essence, I argue that a cell phone has become a central
tool in young migrant women’s construction of a “modern,” hybrid rural-urban identity.
I thus join with Lisa Rofel, Joshua Goldstein, and others in maintaining that modernity

144
is best understood through attending to the way local and global forces converge to
produce meaning in the everyday lives of those who are most often ignored in grand
theorizations of modernity.
2
As Rofel persuasively argues, “If one relocates modernity
by viewing it from the perspective of those marginalized or excluded from the
universalizing center, then it becomes a mutable project developed in unequal cross-
cultural dialogues and contentions.”
3

To frame my discussion, I begin by highlighting some of the central tenets of
modernity as well as feminist and post-colonial interventions in understandings of
modernity. Because modernity is intricately connected to particular forms of power and
discipline, I next discuss Michel Foucault’s concept of power and bring in feminist
understandings of how gender is produced by specific configurations of power. Then,
based on my fieldwork I discuss the mobile phone as it is articulated to and constitutive
of modernity, in other words the way the mobile phone serves as a metonym for
modernity in the lives of rural-to-urban migrant women. In this discussion I focus on
three areas: the cell phone’s association with urban cosmopolitanism and its key role in
the presentation of the self; gendered uses and discourses surrounding cell phones; and
modern competencies associated with mobile phone usage. Throughout this discussion I
argue that the cell phone should not be read as merely a cool accoutrement of a “global
youth culture.” Instead, migrant women’s particular understandings of mobile phones
result from and must be understood within the specific material conditions and
discourses that produce migrant women’s experience in the city.

145
Modernity and Modernities

After I graduated from the middle school in our village, I wanted to go to
high school. My older sister was attending the Normal University in Jilin
City. Then my parents told me they didn’t have the money to send me to
high school because of my sister’s tuition fees. I was so upset. I felt so
betrayed by my mother, and I was so angry I decided to leave and never
go back. I had 110 yuan [about $14] and bought a train ticket to Beijing. It
was 22 hours and I had a hard seat, but since I had never traveled by train
before I didn’t know I had a seat and I stood the whole way. When I
arrived in Beijing, I took a bus to Dongzhimen, not really even knowing
where that was. I had 30 yuan left at that point. I got off the bus and
walked around for a while. Everything was strange and I didn’t know
anyone. Eventually I walked into a restaurant and asked for a job. I told
the owner I wouldn’t take a job unless housing was also provided, and he
agreed. The second day I was in Beijing I called home from a call bar [pay
phone] to tell my parents where I was. It’s hard here, but I’ve learned a lot
and developed myself, and I’ve never regretted what I did.
4

The story above, told to me by a waitress I knew named Luo Li Kun, encapsulates
many of the central tenets of what has been called “modernity” – a mode of being and
thinking that embraces change, faith in the future, and a desire for self transformation as
well as personal autonomy, especially vis-à-vis traditional institutions such as the
family.
5
Luo Li Kun’s story also reveals the uncertainty, anxiety, and upheaval caused
by such a radical break with the past, and is constitutive of the interwoven processes –
including industrialization, urbanization, migration, the spread of mass communication
and transportation systems, and global capitalism – that have created what Marshall
Berman calls the “maelstrom of modern life.”
6
To Berman, the change and flux that are
so central to modernity, and the new opportunities for freedom and autonomy as well as
increasing bureaucratization of everyday life, create a world best encapsulated in Karl
Marx’s pronouncement that “all that is solid melts into air.”
7

146
Though few of the women I met had a story as dramatic and daring as Luo Li
Kun’s, like her many framed their journey to Beijing as an opportunity to leave behind a
“boring village life,” to “see the world,” to “gain new skills,” and, in essence, to become
modern.
8
At the same time, most said that Beijing was an exciting but also different and
often alienating place, and one where they didn’t always have their bearings. In their
discussions comparing home versus life in the city, they very clearly and viscerally
experienced what Anthony Giddens calls the “consequences of modernity” –
discontinuities, dislocation of space and time, the disembedding of social relations from
local contexts, and new modes of trust and risk – that are becoming “more radicalized
and universalized than before.”
9

Modernity, then, is often conceived of on a grand scale and through forces – such
as globalization or bureaucratization – that seem to defy measures of scope and scale. It
is about the increasing disruption and fragmentation of traditional modes of social
organization as well as new ways of understanding oneself and one’s place in the world.
Modernity is associated with freedom and alienation, hope and anxiety, and it is as
much a real transformational process as it is a trope for that which is conceived of as the
opposite of “tradition.” At the same time, the way Luo Li Kun and other migrant
women experience the “consequences of modernity” cannot be separated from the way
they are positioned – due to their gender, rural origin, age, and so forth – in the
particular historical and socio-cultural context of contemporary China.
Modernity and Difference

While theorists such as Berman and Giddens are extremely insightful and have
been highly influential in understandings of what constitutes modernity, both seem to

147
assume a singular, universal experience of modernity. Berman asserts (somewhat
questionably) that forces of modernity cut across “all boundaries of geography and
ethnicity, of class and nationality, of religion and ideology.”
10
Yet, as feminist scholar
Rita Felski notes, to Berman the gender of modernity is clearly male, and all the
“exemplary heroes of his text – Faust, Marx, Baudelaire – are of course symbols not
just of modernity, but also of masculinity, historical markers of the emergence of new
forms of bourgeois and working-class subjectivity.”
11
Felski and others argue that the
prevailing discourse of modernity has been predicated on and upholds the dominant
masculine values of rationality, competition, progress, and individualism while negating
the supposedly feminine values of feeling, cooperation, and continuity, all seen as
traditional and thus the opposite of modern.
12
Feminist anthropologist Dorothy Hodgson
adds:
The oppositional categories of modernity simultaneously valorize and
stigmatize certain gender configurations, certain masculinities and
femininities. Modernity, therefore, is not just about men and women, but
about gender, the cultural, social, political, and economic relations of
power between and among men and women.
13

Certainly in China as elsewhere, the processes and formations associated with
modernity – including economic reform and rural-to-urban migration – are gendered.
Throughout the 20
th
century and continuing to the present, intellectual debates in China
regarding modernity, progress, and national identity have often been intricately linked
to gender, in particular to Chinese “woman,” as with the Iron Girls mentioned in the
previous chapter. In art and cinema as well, the representation of “woman” has
frequently served as a stand-in for the condition of the Chinese nation.
14
At present,

148
conceptions of modernity both reconfigure and reinstantiate dominant notions of
gender, just as they offer both new modes of freedom and new mechanisms of control.
Thus, not only is modernity gendered, but it also constructs particular notions of gender.
As a result, it has distinct implications for men and women because of their different
positions in gendered power relations.
Because the experience of modernity is not only gendered, but is also about race,
nationality, and so forth, as well as the intersection of local and global forces, many
feminist scholars and those examining processes of development and change in non-
western contexts prefer to use the term “other” or “alternative” modernities.
15
A notion
of other modernities challenges a singular version of modernity and forces recognition
that people located across geographical, cultural, and social hierarchies will experience
modernity differently. It also draws attention to the way that the teleology of modernity
has aligned with Enlightenment discourses of progress and rationality that have served
to justify colonialism, imperialism, and the othering of non-western cultures and
people.
16
Furthermore, other/alternative modernities emphasizes how notions of the
“modern” are fluid and shift in relation to particular historical conjunctures and
competing discourses that should not be viewed as merely reactions to western
Modernity.
17

In China, as discussed in the previous chapter, modernity and modernization have
been especially powerful and malleable terms used since the early 20
th
century by
intellectuals, government officials, and the “common people” (laobaixing) to
understand China’s position in the world and to envision and build a strong Chinese
nation able to cast off the suffering and humiliation brought about by Western and

149
Japanese powers. As Lisa Rofel notes in her masterful ethnography of three generations
of Chinese female factory workers, “what gets called modernity in China is neither a
purely localized matter nor a mere instantiation of a universal discourse.”
18
Rather,
modernity exists “as a repeatedly deferred enactment marked by discrepant desires that
continually replace one another.”
19
Modernity, therefore, does not only designate
certain processes or a particular era. It is also a very compelling trope for a socially
constructed way of being and an imagined future.
Clearly, Maoist modernity, which stressed national self-reliance and entailed a
quest to mold the collective and build a socialist utopia, meant something quite different
from current notions of Chinese modernity. However, they both share a faith in the
future, an emphasis on technological progress, and the concerted effort of the state to
produce subjects that can most effectively strengthen the Chinese nation. As elaborated
in the previous chapter, contemporary Chinese modernity is concerned with building a
harmonious society, guaranteeing people a “comfortable life” achieved through wealth
and consumer goods, and raising national and individual “quality.” At the same time,
certain people’s access to this modernity is severely constrained. Within discourses of
modernity, migrant women are viewed as lacking – skills, quality, knowledge – in a
manner similar to how colonial discourses positioned non-western peoples. Hence, a
young rural women’s understanding of modernity and her engagement with technology
in her project of “becoming modern” will differ from an urban woman’s as well as both
rural and urban men’s experiences of these processes.
For this reason, several scholars insist that modernity is best comprehended
through examining the daily lived experiences – the seemingly mundane or quotidian –

150
of ordinary people in specific locales. As Joshua Goldstein states, “Modernity is staged
in the space of the everyday, in its myriad particular contexts, and modernity in many
ways reproduces and reshapes the way everyday life is lived.”
20
Hodgson thus uses the
term “the production of modernities” to recognize the various forms modernity takes
“as well as the centrality of people’s agency in creatively and actively engaging these
processes to produce new and distinct ways of ‘being modern,’ within shifting structural
(such as historical, political, economic, and social) constraints and opportunities.”
21

Examining the “everydayness” of the production of modernity entails attending to its
multiplicity and to how modern identity is shaped through multiple discourses,
knowledges, practices, and power relations. It thus necessitates an understanding of
modern power.

Foucault, Modern Power, and Gender
Michel Foucault has written extensively on how modern institutions and forms of
governance produce new modes of power, discipline, and subjectivity. Key to his
analysis is a conception of power not as sovereign, institutional, or economic (although
he does not deny these) but as the “multiplicity of force relations” that are unequal,
unstable, and circulating all around us, everywhere, in a web-like fashion.
22
Since
power inheres in all relationships, people are always “simultaneously undergoing and
exercising power” and are not only its “consenting target” but also the “elements of its
articulation.”
23
For this reason, Foucault stresses that it is not power itself that must be
analyzed but power relations, their location, their methods, and their effects.
24
To
Foucault, people do not exist outside of power relations. Rather, as we all participate in

151
power, we are also the effects of power. Hence, he rejects a notion of power as
something solely negative or repressive, insisting instead that it is productive: it
produces knowledge, discourse, disciplines, and norms. Power thus produces our very
subjectivity through a variety of techniques.
For Foucault, one of the most crucial sites for the productive effects of power is
the body, and more specifically “docile bodies” that “may be subjected, used,
transformed and improved.”
25
To produce docile bodies, disciplinary techniques of
power are employed through multiple institutions (such as schools, factories, the
military) as well as social practices that regulate behavior, thoughts, and activities. Such
disciplinary techniques are linked to Foucault’s notion of bio-power, or the “diverse
techniques for achieving the subjugation of bodies and the control of populations” for
purposes of economic development and social stability.
26
Foucault thus shows the
various ways in which power is integrated into every ounce of our physical, intellectual,
and mental body.
Docile bodies are necessary to the state because they increase economic utility but
decrease political dissension. However, disciplinary power is not only a function of the
state; it is an important aspect of social relations, where the body, as an effect of power,
is a crucial site as well for the articulation of power. As Foucault stresses, disciplinary
power is achieved largely through invisible processes and our own internalization of
regulating discourses that function to normalize certain thoughts, standards, and
behaviors. As we participate in normalizing, disciplinary practices, we also reproduce
them, most often without conscious thought. Disciplinary power is thus “exercised
through its invisibility,” yet at the same time imposes in people a “compulsory

152
visibility.”
27
Nowhere is this more clearly explained than with Foucault’s appropriation
of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon to illustrate the power of self surveillance, self
regulation, and our internalization of the “inspecting gaze.” The Panopticon arranges
space so that it induces a state of “permanent visibility that assures the automatic
functioning of power.”
28
It is power’s invisibility, the possibility of surveillance, that is
crucial to its productive function.
In his later work, Foucault focused on the notion of governmentality, or the
underlying rationalities used by states to improve the prosperity, security, and well
being of both the state and the individual, and how individuals are integrated into and
comply with these rationalities.
29
Governmentality involves both how to “govern
others” and how to “govern oneself.”
30
As Thomas Lemke notes, “Governmentality is
introduced by Foucault to study the ‘autonomous’ individual’s capacity for self-control
and how this is linked to forms of political rule and economic exploitation.”
31
A key
aspect of governmentality is the interaction between what Foucault calls “technologies
of power” or domination and “technologies of the self.” Technologies of the self
“permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain
number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of
being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness,
purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality.”
32
Though governmentality encompasses the
state’s role in guidance of the populace and forming consensus, in focusing on
technologies of the self, Foucault stresses that he is most interested in “how an
individual acts upon himself.”
33

153
Common western perceptions of China often invoke the authoritarian nature of the
Chinese Communist Party and the state’s concerted efforts at social engineering and
monitoring the population, in particular through the one-child policy. However, as the
state has shifted ideologically and emphasized economic development and consumption
to maintain its legitimacy, there has been a simultaneous retreat of the state from many
aspects of people’s everyday lives. This has been accompanied through a neoliberal
discourse that emphasizes people’s own efforts to achieve their goals, succeed in the
economy, and raise their “quality.” Foucault’s concepts of power, discipline, and
governmentality thus provide a useful framework for understanding how people situate
themselves in China’s current discourse of modernity and how this discourse produces
particular subjects.
However, while Foucault’s insights into the productive nature of power, the role
of self-regulation, and the technologies of the self are extremely compelling and
relevant across cultures, like the grand narratives of modernity his analysis neglects any
substantive attention to gender. As Sandra Bartky argues, Foucault “treats the body
throughout as if it were one, as if the bodily experiences of men and women did not
differ and as if men and women bore the same relationship to the characteristic
institutions of modern life.”
34
She adds that while men and women are both subject to
disciplinary practices, some of which are the same, there are a range of disciplines that
are specifically applied to women. These “disciplinary practices of femininity” are
designed to produce a certain body size; a “repertoire of gestures, postures, and
movements;” and an ornamented body.
35
Furthermore, because these are normalized
they are “part of the process by which the ideal body of femininity—and hence the

154
feminine body-subject—is constructed.”
36
Susan Bordo adds that such dominant forms
of gendered selfhood and subjectivity are not maintained primarily through coercion
(though they certainly can be) but rather through one’s own self-surveillance and
adherence to gender norms.
37
Both Bartky and Bordo attend to “the politics of
appearance” that are perpetuated through an internalization of an inspecting gaze and to
the power relations that produce a certain, gendered, cultured, practiced body. Of
course, these are intricately linked to practices of consumption.

Modernity, Consumption, and the Self
If modernity is simultaneously about autonomy and individuality as well as
techniques of normalization that arise within the growth of capitalism and urbanization,
then it is no wonder that a central aspect of “being modern” is increased attention to the
presentation of the self, most often through consumption and display of commodities.
Within modernity, consumption becomes not just about utility but instead a way to
assert symbolically one’s taste, status, and identity. Erving Goffman called the tools and
commodities that people use in the presentation of the self one’s “identity kit”
38
while
Stewart Ewen has used the term “commodity self” to denote how one’s sense of
selfhood, identity and, by extension, relations with others, is an amalgamation of
various commodities which are used and displayed. As Ewen notes, style and fashion
commodities are important aspects of subjectivity, providing a “powerful medium of
encounter and exchange.”
39
Likewise, consumer goods become instruments “for the
construction of self,” even if this “commodity self” is a surrogate self.
40
Jean
Baudrillard and others argue that in postmodernity, or what Giddens calls late

155
modernity, objects of consumption operate within the logic of signification, taking on
meanings as signs that bear little relationship to their functional purpose.
41
Such signs
relate to each other in opposition and serve to differentiate individuals from one another
as well as to confer status.
Perhaps Pierre Bourdieu has provided one of the most detailed analyses of the
relationship between consumption, taste, differentiation, and the power relations that
inhere in these phenomena. Bourdieu persuasively argues that taste and social class are
intricately intertwined and that notions of taste serve to mark difference and reproduce
systems of domination. To Bourdieu, the “aesthetic disposition,” or one’s taste “unites
and separates;” it is also how “one classifies oneself and is classified by others.”
42
The
myth of “natural taste,” which is actually produced through particular social and
cultural assumptions, serves to legitimate social difference and stratification. As he
states, “Objectively and subjectively aesthetic stances adopted in matters like cosmetics,
clothing or home decoration are opportunities to experience or assert one’s position in
social space, as a rank to be upheld or a distance to be kept.”
43

Key to Bourdieu’s concept of taste is the habitus – the “structuring structure” or
one’s “space of life-styles” that is internalized and generates one’s dispositions,
perceptions, habits, and practices.
44
Central also to Bourdieu’s discussion of taste are
cultural and symbolic capital. Cultural capital is a form of capital that can be embodied,
for example in “long-lasting dispositions of the mind and body,” such as distinct types
of knowledge, competencies, practices, and tastes that are cultivated over time. It can
also be objectified “in the form of cultural goods,” such as artworks, instruments,
machines, and books as well as institutionalized, as in the form of a university degree.
45

156
Symbolic capital, on the other hand, is any form of capital that is not recognized as such
but nonetheless confers prestige, status, or honor.
46
Bourdieu’s notions of the habitus,
taste, and forms of capital, while different in their explanatory origin, can be linked to
Foucault’s notion of power and discourse, in that both posit the productive nature of
power and the internalization of norms and practices.

In the remainder of this chapter, I show how a vast array of discourses, power
relations, and consumption behaviors shape migrant women’s socio-techno practices
associated with mobile phones in Beijing. More specifically, I draw from my fieldwork
to elaborate the mobile phone as a metonym for a particular kind of modernity, one that
is constitutive of migrant women’s position within contemporary China. Indeed,
migrant women’s conception of both migration and technology evolves from
government discourses of development as well as internalization of such discourses and
translation of these into “technologies of the self.” As Rofel states, “Modernity enfolds
and explodes by means of global capitalist forms of domination in conjunction with
state techniques for normalizing its citizens.”
47
In using the mobile phone to gain access
to a hybrid rural-urban identity, the experience of migrant women gives credence to
Rofel’s words, and reveals that alternative modernities are best understood through
capturing and comprehending the everyday.

Becoming Modern: Mobile Phone as Metonym for Modernity
How then are mobile phones as used and understood by migrant women integrated
into China’s discourses of development and modernity, and how are they central in
constructing a “modern” identity? To answer this question, it is necessary first to situate

157
the mobile phone within the urban consumer practices and modes of constructing
female subjectivity that predate its arrival, most notably clothing and make-up. When a
rural woman moves to the city, certainly part of her forming a “modern identity” occurs
through being in a certain place – a city and not a village – and through being engaged
in a certain occupation – service work and not agriculture. Another part of this
transformation, however, is achieved through internalization of powerful disciplinary
techniques that reveal the “direct grip” that culture has on material bodies.
48

As discussed in the previous chapter, within the social and cultural milieu of
contemporary China, the rural has been constructed as “lagging behind,” and, in
Chinese anthropologist Yan Hairong’s words, “as a field of death for the modern
personhood desired by young women, who imagine the spaces of hope for such
personhood to be somewhere else, in the city.”
49
However, once in the city, migrant
women are subject to stringent regulatory practices regarding their appearance, gait,
gestures, and speech. Their bodies, like all bodies, emit particular signs, in this case
signs that signify their rural status. The “normalizing gaze” of the urban milieu is thus a
powerful force that motivates most young migrant women to participate in the very
disciplinary practices of femininity that Sandra Bartky delineates.
For example, many of the women I knew told me at home in the countryside they
never worried too much about their appearance. They dressed rather simply, they did
not use cosmetics, and they kept their hair cut short. In the city, however, they instantly
became aware of their “bumpkin” appearance, and this awareness results from the
disapproving stares and verbal scorn of urban residents. This was most clearly
explained to me by a waitress I knew named Ji Hua. The first time I interviewed her

158
was during one of her rare days off from the restaurant where she worked. When we
met, she was wearing a pink fuzzy sweater, tight jeans, high-heeled boots, bright pink
lipstick and a thick layer of eye make-up. Though it was chilly outside, she did not wear
a coat presumably because this would have diminished her performance of dominant
femininity. At one point in our conversation, she told me, “Clothes and make-up have
become really important, especially when I compare myself to a Beijing person. In the
countryside, people wear whatever. People aren’t that concerned with it because there is
nothing to buy. To go shopping for clothes means taking a one-hour bus ride. It’s very
inconvenient, and anyway we don’t have a lot of money.”
50
Several other women told
me that they had made a lot of effort at changing their outward appearance once they
had moved to Beijing. This change was as much a result of the pleasure they took in
shopping and wearing clothes they couldn't buy at home as their equally strong desire to
avoid the rude stares and remarks of Beijing residents.
The Mobile Phone and the “Presentation of the Self”
Just as clothing and make-up are key factors in most migrant women’s
construction of a hybrid rural-urban female identity, increasingly cell phones are as
well. Nearly every migrant woman (and all the migrant men) with whom I spoke – no
matter her salary, occupation, or education – had a mobile phone. The only exceptions
to this were the 32 young women enrolled in the computer training course (because they
were not working and had no income) as well as four working women.
51
All of these
students eagerly desired to buy a mobile phone, as indicated in the quotes that began
this chapter, and many had bought a phone by the time I left Beijing.

159
One way to convey the significance of a mobile phone in the lives of migrant
women is through simple economics. Most of the women in this study earned an
average of 800 – 1,000 yuan/month (approximately $104 to $130), including overtime,
and paid the equivalent of one month’s salary and often more for their phone, although
cheaper models were available.
52
They also usually spent 50 to 100 yuan per month
(about $6.50 to $13) on prepaid phone cards. Even with those whose father, uncle, or
older sibling had supplied them with a hand-me-down handset, the first big urban
purchase of every migrant with whom I spoke was a cell phone. Time after time, my
informants could recite the date, time, and place of the purchase, who had accompanied
them, the price, how long it had taken for them to save up enough money, and their
feelings of satisfaction and accomplishment at having acquired this “personal, portable”
device. Although a few items of inexpensive clothing may have been bought before the
cell phone, beyond a television, a music player, or even a precious train ticket home
after months of being away, a mobile phone was, as Chen Jingfei, a woman I knew who
worked at a marketplace put it, “the first, most expensive, important, gift to myself,
ever.”
53
Another woman I knew told me she slept with her phone because it was so
important to her.
Some women invested in more costly phones with cameras and music players,
some purchased more expensive foreign brands, such as a Nokia or Motorola, but many
bought cheaper domestic models or even second-hand and brandless phones that
allowed for simple voice calls and texting. In some cases there appeared to be a trade-
off between either purchasing a Chinese model with a camera and a music player, and a
more prestigious foreign model without such extra functions. Regardless of the brand or

160
the actual functions, of extreme importance for most women was the phone’s
appearance, as is quite evident in the following conversation I had with Zhang Xiumei,
a young woman who worked as a greeter in a photography studio:
CW: May I see your mobile phone?
ZXM: Sure.
CW: It’s a Lenovo.
ZXM: Yes.
CW: (Pointing to the scenery on the screensaver) Where was this taken?
ZXM: It came with the phone.
CW: It’s pretty.
ZXM: No, it’s so ugly. I regret buying this phone because it’s so ugly.
CW: You regret buying it?
ZXM: Yes, when I first bought it I wanted to choose a good looking one, but this
one is so ugly.
CW: It’s ugly?
ZXM: It’s ugly.
CW: Why do you say that?
ZXM: Because of the color.
CW: What color do you want?
ZXM: White, or pink. I regret buying this. It looks like it has a third eye [because
of the camera lens].
CW: How much did it cost?
ZXM: 1,200 yuan [about $156]
CW: 1, 200. That’s a bit expensive, don’t you think?
ZXM: Yes, especially considering how ugly it is. Also, the quality isn’t as good
as, like, a Nokia or a Motorola. So I regret buying it.
CW: Why did you choose it?
ZXM: I don’t know. I was persuaded by a clever salesperson (laughs).
54

Many other women also said their phone had to look “pretty,” and like Zhang
Xiumei some women expressed embarrassment at having a phone that was too big or
old. Many women had decorated their phones with stickers, “jewelry,” special covers,
or, in a few cases, rhinestones. The stickers were usually photos of themselves alone or
with a close friend, emphasizing the phone as a socio-techno representation of the self.
Such stress placed on the appearance of the phone coheres with the notion of the

161
importance of consumer goods in constructing personal identity within modernity and
late modernity, or what Mike Featherstone has called the intensifying of “the
aestheticization of everyday life.”
55
The concern for the prettiness of the phone, in
particular a desire for a pink-colored phone or the application of decorations such a
rhinestones are also clearly an assertion and a reflection of a type of “modern” Chinese
female subjectivity, which as discussed in the previous chapter, emphasizes
essentialized notions of gender. Zhang Xiumei’s regret over having purchased an “ugly”
phone reveals the normalization and internalization of these dominant notions of
femininity.
Of course, in other studies, mobile phones have been found to be important among
young people in the presentation of the self, as a part of the self, as status symbols, or as
a form of youth cultural capital. I often found manifestations of these as well in my
fieldwork; for example, some women told me they felt like their phone had become part
of them. However, perhaps most importantly the mobile phone was directly and
explicitly associated with the modern, and by extension, the urban. As Luo Judi, who
sold earrings and hair accessories in one of the large marketplaces, told me, “If you live
in the city and you don’t have a mobile phone – especially someone my age – others
look down on you.”
56
Other women echoed such sentiments – a phone was clearly part
of being “modern,” or “developed” and along with new clothing and make-up – which
for rural women are especially powerful disciplinary practices of urban femininity, as
mentioned above – was a form of symbolic capital that set them apart from their peers
still at home in the countryside.

162
For young migrant women, then, mobile phone ownership takes on a dual
symbolism – it is part of youth culture and it is part of being modern – and this is a
result of how the discourses surrounding both China’s development and the
development of rural women are intertwined. As mentioned in chapter two, in the
Chinese media and in the everyday speech of urbanites, female migrants are often
portrayed as passive, backward, naïve, and of general “low quality.” They are
positioned in such discourses within the context of China’s socio-cultural traditions, and
they also exemplify the connection made by Chandra Mohanty between gender,
capitalism, and globalization, as they are thought to be docile, suited to certain gendered
occupations, and easily exploited; hence, they constitute a flexible labor force in the
global economy.
57

Currently, China’s modernization is synonymous with the expansion of the market
economy; however, the exploitative labor practices this has entailed have been erased
through a discourse in which migration is framed as providing an opportunity for rural
women to “become modern” and to benefit, not only financially, but also by “seeing the
world,” “developing themselves,” and “gaining some skills.” Through China’s
structural and ideological transformations, the rural is overwhelmingly positioned as
“backward,” “uncivilized,” and “undeveloped” while the urban has been constructed
literally and figuratively as synonymous with modernity, progress, and “quality”
(suzhi). As discussed in the previous chapter, suzhi, which encompasses quality as a
whole, also “refers to the somewhat ephemeral qualities of civility, self-discipline, and
modernity” and is related to how the self is valued as well as a sense of self-value in the
market economy.
58

163
Suzhi can thus be understood through Foucault’s notion of governmentality, in
that the discourse of suzhi emanates from the government but has been internalized by
Chinese citizens as something they must cultivate, and indeed want to cultivate, to
prosper and assure their own happiness and well being.
59
It is a “technology of the self”
in that individuals, ostensibly of their own accord or with the help of others, seek to
transform their bodies, mentally or physically, to achieve contentment or wisdom. In the
city, migrant women – because of the intersection of gender, class, and their rural origin
– bear a particularly heavy burden to improve their suzhi.
Yet, rural women who migrate to the city are not just “duped” into consenting to
exploitative work that promises somehow to improve them; they choose this path
because they feel they can actually gain something. At the same time, they invariably
embrace certain consumer practices as a conscious way to shed their “rural essence,” as
Zhang Xiumei termed it at one point. Thus, for them, a mobile phone is not just a
transmission device. It is a socio-techno object that articulates not only youth identity
but also a modern, hybrid rural-urban identity. It displays their “quality” as a
manifestation of their economic capital gained through labor. A cell phone also
performs as objectified cultural capital as it reveals one’s taste; as mentioned earlier it is
a form of symbolic capital as well. A cell phone helps establish migrant women’s
position, however ambiguous, in the city. In short, along with dressing more
fashionably, reducing their accent, and all of the other disciplines designed to reform
their rural bodies, it is part of their process of identification in the city, or “becoming
modern.”

164
Some scholars have argued that young migrant women merely buy into the false
allures of consumption, whereby consumer goods hold an elusive promise of suturing
them seamlessly into urban life and masking their alterity.
60
Such a position begs the
question: why is it when middle class or affluent youth purchase and use mobile
phones, the cell phone is immediately heralded as cool artifact of global youth culture,
but when economically and socially marginalized young people express the same
desires for consumer goods and form identity in relation to such goods this is called
“false consciousness” induced by the evil purveyors of global capitalism? Such a
position potentially reifies a marginalized, “other” subaltern subject that these scholars
are trying to challenge. I argue instead that owning a mobile phone is an important part
of migrant women’s construction of an urban female subjectivity. In purchasing and
using a cell phone they are engaged in an act of agency through controlling their
personal resources, enhancing their own sense of self worth, and using a device that
brings myriad pleasures, including entertainment and social contact. It also allows them
access, albeit limited, to the promised “comfortable life” as well as participation in
consumer citizenship, perhaps a more important form of citizenship than their legal
citizenship, which is so severely constrained within the city.

The Mobile Phone and the “Gender of Modernity”
61

In the previous discussion I noted many women’s focus on a particular appearance
of the phone – one that is socially constructed as aligning with a “modern” essentialized
notion of feminine subjectivity. In this section, I further explore the connection between
gender and technology by discussing gendered uses and discourses of mobile phones

165
among the migrant women and men in my study. In my fieldwork, cell phones, their
usage, and language explaining such usage revealed much about the social construction
of both gender and technology, and the constitutive nature of both. In formulating my
argument, I draw primarily from observations and interviews conducted in hair salons,
although many of the practices and discourses that I discuss were also prevalent among
many migrants I knew, regardless of where they were employed.
When I lived in Beijing in the early nineties hair salons were few and far between,
and most Chinese friends I knew either cut their own hair or had a relative or a friend
cut it for them. Western hotels had expensive salons, but their location and prices meant
that local Chinese did not patronize these salons. The most prevalent form of “salon”
was quite makeshift and practical. On weekend mornings, self-taught barbers would set
up shop outside along the riverbanks or in parks by bringing a chair, a few towels, a
comb, and some scissors. For a nominal fee, they would cut basic unisex styles as
customers and friends would hang out chatting, drinking tea, or playing mahjong. These
types of outdoor salons are no longer very common in Beijing except on the outskirts,
and most of these barbers have either moved on to other jobs or have set up tiny indoor
shops. Now in Beijing trendy, fashionable hair salons have cropped up all over. They
usually have large windows so that passersby will take a look inside and decide to get a
haircut or a massage. The inside décor is often brightly colored with pictures of western
and Asian models hanging on the walls. The employees are mostly young male and
female migrants, who often sport spiky, colored hair and wear blue jeans, stylish t-
shirts, and sneakers.

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Hair salons in Beijing thus serve as a very tangible manifestation of the
transformations the city has undergone in the last decade or so. On the one hand, they
are a result of the market reforms that have ushered in a service economy. On the other
hand, they visibly represent a society that has transitioned from one based on collective
values and asceticism, and where showing concern for physical beauty was deemed
“bourgeois” and could result in an individual being severely reprimanded, to a
contemporary landscape where beauty and fashion are revered. This change has resulted
from a desire to reclaim “natural” gender differences suppressed during the Mao era as
well as an influx of images of cosmopolitan style that circulate through the Chinese and
transnational media.
All but the tiniest of salons – which were more like barbershops and deemed
“traditional” (meaning old-fashioned) by the women I knew – presented a microcosm of
the essentialized notions of gender and the resulting gendered disciplines, stratification,
and power relations that exist in contemporary China, and these were also manifest in
mobile phone use in the salons, as I will explain shortly. Hair salons in Beijing (perhaps
like everywhere else) are physical terrains where the performativity of gender is
continuously reconstituted through the services requested and rendered that reinstate
norms of appearance in line with conventional notions of masculinity and femininity.
This observation is similar to those made of African-American beauty salons and
Korean nail salons in the U.S. (to give just two examples), and thus in and of itself is
not remarkable.
62
What is exceptional is how the discursive environment of the salons
also constructs the employees as highly gendered subjects in ways that go far deeper
than appearance. For example, in all but one salon I visited, I was told that women were

167
not allowed to be “stylists,” meaning they could not cut hair, and interestingly this one
exception had a female manager. This unspoken rule can be traced to the old Chinese
maxim of “valuing men and belittling women” (zhongnanqingnü), and it persists in the
belief that because cutting hair is seen as requiring high technical skill (gaojishu), it is
therefore reserved for men.
63
Women, on the other hand, are only allowed to do the
practical (shiyong) or unskilled jobs, which include washing and drying hair, applying
(but not mixing) hair color, giving massages (amo), cleaning up the salon, and greeting
customers and storing their belongings in a locker for safekeeping.
In all of the salons that I visited, the male employees – who are the “stylists” –
tend to control the salon, often giving orders to the women, supervising them, and
treating them in a subservient manner. Male stylists absorbed in a card game or other
diversion barely glance at a customer who enters a salon since it is the females’ job to
greet the customer and do all of the preparations up to the actual haircut. On several
occasions I observed that even when all of the women in a salon were already occupied
with other clients and all of the male stylists were free, a new customer would
nonetheless have to wait for a female to wash and comb out their hair. The males also
had their own physical space – a station with their name often engraved above the
mirror – and an ideological space supported by their status, their income (they made
two or three times more money than the women), and their “ownership” of time: they
had more days off per month and more down time while at work, which they often
spent playing cards, playing games on their mobile phones, or going outside for a
smoke.

168
Customers, both male and female, were also more likely to treat women working
at salons in a demeaning manner. For example, one morning while I was at one of the
salons that I frequented, a woman – from her appearance and accent most likely a
Beijing resident – came in to ask if the salon offered a certain type of hair treatment.
Cui Yiping, the young woman who was working at the time, told the woman she did not
think that they offered this service but she would check with the stylist when he arrived
(stylists always arrive later in the morning, after the salon has been cleaned). The
woman repeated her question, and when Cui Yiping reiterated that she didn’t know the
answer, the woman berated her, called her foolish (sha), and left. This incident is
indicative of the type of treatment migrants in general receive from urban residents, and
is also based on the broad perception that women who work in hair salons are morally
suspect and thus not worthy of respect. This is because hair salons that give massages
are associated with prostitution, since massage parlors are indeed often fronts for
prostitution. Though it is easy to tell the difference between a legitimate and “red light”
salon, such prejudice and suspicion extends to nearly all women employed in hair
salons. It should be noted that as a Korean-style salon, Cui Yiping’s salon did not even
offer any type of massage service.
The gender stratification and dominant notions of “modern” essentialized
masculinity and femininity that were evident in the jobs, behaviors, attitudes, and
hierarchy of the salons were also reified through mobile phone use. In every hair salon I
visited, male employees had more expensive, hi-tech mobile phones with more
functions than the female employees. In fact, nearly every male with whom I spoke had
a phone with a music and video player as well as Internet capability, and this was also

169
the case with males I met in other occupations. Although going online via a mobile
phone is quite expensive in Beijing, these young men had invariably secured a low
fixed rate for unlimited Internet access early on when China Mobile had offered
inexpensive packages to entice new customers. For example, although while I was in
Beijing accessing the Internet via cell phone cost about 30 yuan (about $4.00) per hour,
the males in the salons often had a deal where they paid 15 yuan per month for
unlimited access. The only exceptions were young men who had just arrived from the
countryside and were still “in training,” and who tended to have inexpensive phones
with only basic functions. These were also the only males I ever saw greet customers,
wash hair, or sweep the floor, and this was only at a few salons. The young women, on
the other hand, overall had less expensive phones, usually Chinese models, with basic
voice and texting functionality and in some cases a camera. Only one woman had
previously had a higher end phone and Internet access through the phone (which she
had since dropped and broken), but she was clearly the exception. In her own words,
she was “like a boy” (xiang nanhaizi).
Of course, such differences were partially due to financial reasons. Male migrants
usually earn more than females, even when they have the same job, just as urban men
make more than urban women in China. However, I argue that this phenomenon goes
much deeper than finances and is a result of the way dominant gender norms have been
reconfigured in the post-Mao era. As discussed in chapter two, in today’s China as a
way to repudiate the Maoist past, “modernity” is linked to essentialized notions of
gender. In particular, a “modern” woman melds “traditional” and “westernized”
standards of outward beauty and feminine comportment. Working in tandem with this

170
reclamation of a more traditional notion of female subjectivity is a consumer culture
that emphasizes gender binaries and the sexualization of women’s bodies. Such
dominant gender ideologies were manifested in the way the participants in my study
understood technology.
Male migrants often used and displayed their mobile phones as signifiers of their
higher status and masculinity vis-à-vis migrant women and gendered discourses of
technology use, exemplifying the performative nature of gender, were pervasive among
the men and women with whom I spoke. For example, I frequently visited a hair salon
near my apartment in Beijing to have my hair washed and to get a shoulder massage.
During these occasions I spoke numerous times to the three young women who worked
at the salon about their lives in Beijing, their mobile phone use, their goals for the
future, and so on. Once while I was at the salon the boss’ son (who managed the place
in his father’s absence) was busy playing a game online on his phone. He was eager to
show me his phone – a Nokia smartphone that most likely had cost around 4,000 yuan
(over $520) and which had all sorts of features and applications that he deftly
manipulated with barely a glance at the touchpad. Once he had finished his
demonstration, I asked Xiao Wu, who was washing my hair, if she ever played games
on her phone or online and she said that she did not. When I asked her why not, she
replied, “Guys like that sort of thing more. They like to show that they are hi-tech. Girls
don’t care about showing off like that. They just like to chat. This starts even from
childhood, you know.”
64
I met other women in a variety of occupations who discussed
men and women’s mobile phone usage in similar terms. For example, Tian Ai, a young
woman who sold clothing in a market reiterated that “girls just like to chat and send

171
short messages. Guys like to exchange information and pictures.”
65
Still another young
woman told me that “it’s important for guys to show off and appear cool and up-to-
date.”
66

As I was having my conversation with Xiao Wu, there was a constant popping of
firecrackers outside since it was during the two-week Chinese New Year celebrations.
As we listened to the firecrackers exploding, Xiao Wu added, “It’s like firecrackers.
When I grew up in the countryside, girls just watched as the boys played with the
firecrackers.”
67
Unintentionally and quite simply, Xiao Wu had drawn a link between
the most ancient of Chinese technologies – gunpowder and firecrackers – and the most
modern of western technologies – the mobile phone – that revealed how gender and
technology usage are mutually constitutive constructions. As feminist scholar of
technology Cynthia Cockburn states, “Gender is a social achievement. Technology
too.”
68
Just as gender identity is necessarily relational, so too “technological artifacts
entail relations,” and these relations “enter into our gendered identities”
69
(emphasis in
original), in this case a “modern” female subjectivity underpinned by traditional notions
of gender.
After Xiao Wu explained quite clearly the socially constructed nature of men and
women’s relationship to technology, she also offered a reason for why women could not
cut hair. “It’s not the skill (that guys are better at),” she said, “It’s that they can see
beauty. And anyway, girls are getting their hair cut for guys to look at, right?”
70
The
certainty with which she said these words denied the possibility of questioning the
gendered hierarchy of the salon or the larger society, or the gendered nature of
technology use. It thus appears that the disciplinary practices of femininity do not only

172
regulate a woman’s body size, gestures, posture, or self ornamentation. They also
pervade usages of technology, and once again position women as passive, chatty, and
concerned with feelings while men are active, rational, and powerful senders of
information.
These discursive constructions of gender and technology were echoed numerous
times in my fieldwork. Though cell phones are a “modern” medium that might displace
space and time, they do not necessarily disrupt “traditional” notions of gender,
particularly when these very notions are conceived of as modern. As Rita Felski notes,
“(T)he stories we create in turn reveal the inescapable presence and power of gender
symbolism.”
71
In my study, the actual phones possessed, their functionality, their usage,
and perhaps most significantly, the way they were spoken about all served to strengthen
gender norms and differentiation.
72
Though of course some women shared with me their
obvious displeasure with their subordinate position in their jobs due to the fact that they
were women, especially in the hair salons, most still seemed to be resolved to their
“fate,” confirming once again the power of normalizing discourse and the
internalization of a self-critiquing gaze.

Modern Skills
While the mobile phone is integrated into China’s discourses of development and
modernization in the way it can function as cultural and symbolic capital as well as
support a modern feminine identity, it also embodies and necessitates a set of
“modern” practices and competencies that are constitutive of “self-development” and
suzhi in contemporary China. Cell phone usage entails particular forms of literacy,

173
technical know-how, and etiquette, which are also forms of embodied cultural capital.
Here I discuss each of these aspects of mobile phone use, the challenges they can pose
for migrant women, and certain tactics migrant women use to overcome these same
challenges.
Telephony is usually only minimally associated with literacy since even those
with almost no reading or writing skills most likely have learned basic numbers and
thus can manipulate a telephone keypad to make a voice call with relative ease.
However, as opposed to traditional fixed-line phones, cell phones, of course, also have
text messaging functionality. In China, text messaging is the predominant form of
communication via cell phones, especially among low-income populations due to the
relatively inexpensive cost of a text message (about 10 Chinese fen, or 1.3 U.S. cents).
Because of the widespread usage of text messaging, cell phone usage in China demands
a certain degree of literacy. In fact, because of the design features of basic mobile
phones and the way Chinese characters are inputted, text messaging requires two forms
of literacy. First, a word must be typed in pinyin, or the standardized romanization
system of Chinese characters in the People’s Republic. For example, for the word “wo,”
meaning “I” in Chinese, the letters “w-o” must be typed. Once inputted, several
characters will appear for the pinyin “wo,” and the user must then select the proper
character. Though the most common characters appear first on the screen, sometimes as
many as 30 characters might be available as choices since morphemes in Chinese
always have several different meanings according to which tone is used. Furthermore,
the same combination of letters and tone can have more than one meaning and thus will

174
be represented by a different character. Though predictive text is a feature of Chinese
mobile phone interfaces, just as in English this does not always imply ease of use.
Using a cell phone is not just a matter of literacy, however – it also involves
certain technical skills. The mobile phone user must be able to navigate the various
functions of the phone, such as the address book, text message inbox and outbox, MMS,
and voicemail (though this last function is almost never used in China). There are also a
variety of settings to be manipulated, including ringstyle, ringtones, wallpaper, and the
like. Phones with cameras, music players, or games of course place added technical
demands on the user. Additional functionalities, such as video and Internet capabilities,
necessitate even greater skills.
In addition to literacy and technical skills, cell phones also require knowledge of
conventional telephone etiquette, such as starting phone calls, using minimal responses
to indicate one is listening, and being able to tactfully communicate a desire to end a
call. These can all be viewed as forms of cultural capital, but the cell phone has also
generated additional rules and norms that a user must learn, and these often demand
certain literacy and technical skills. Again, these norms and practices are especially
associated with text messaging. For example, consistent with much prior cell phone
research among youth, all of the young women I met agreed that text messages must be
responded to relatively immediately, otherwise the receiver will be thought of as rude.
73

The only exception occurs when the receiver is unable to reply because they are
preoccupied or prohibited from using their phone at work. While I was in Beijing,
whenever someone responded to a message more than 20 or 30 minutes after I had sent
it their reply always contained a profuse apology.

175
I elaborate on these various requirements of literacy, technical ability, and
etiquette because among educated users these imply access to a taken-for-granted
modernity and are not assumed to pose any difficulty. However, for women with
limited education and minimal technical skills, the requirements and expectations
attached to mobile phone usage can present challenges. Some women I interviewed
expressed anxiety about not always knowing which character to choose and some said
they did not always know how to respond properly to a message. For example, Hu
Lanying worked in a migrant market in the northern part of Beijing. She had only had
one year of middle school before migrating to the city. When I asked her about text
messaging with her friends she said:
I like to send and receive messages because it is the only way I stay in
contact with my friends. But my friends sometimes send me messages and
I don’t know always have the right words to reply. My friends criticized
me for being so slow, and part of it is because of Chinese characters. But it
is also because I’m at a loss for what to say. You know my level of
knowledge is so low.

Others I knew were also ridiculed by their peers when they didn’t understand a
message or replied too slowly; in fact, I witnessed such derision and disciplining on
more than a few occasions, and this ridicule wasn’t necessarily virtual. In one instance,
I was sitting in the dormitory of some of the young women who had graduated from the
computer training course and who were now working in a company where they inputted
financial data and other records from banks and large global companies. One of them
was showing me the phone she had just bought. Like so many others it was her first big
purchase since earning an income, and she was eager for me to see it. As we looked at
the phone’s wallpaper, one of her co-present peers sent her a message. When she was

176
too slow in typing her reply, all of the other women made fun of her. She was so upset
by their teasing – and her loss of face – that she ran out of the room crying as I sat there
fairly astonished. I was also the subject of such ribbing when I was too slow to “get” a
joke sent via SMS – and this teasing came in the form of a text message (!).
Cell phones clearly usher in new socio-techno disciplinary practices, new
techniques of normalization, and internalization of what could be called a regulatory
technological gaze. The ridiculing and anxiety about responding to a message described
above could be understood as a form of bullying, which is unfortunately a common
practice among youth in a variety of countries. However, in the case of migrant women
it not only marks in-group/out-group boundaries of peer groups. It also reifies their
marginal status in Chinese society as a whole and again exemplifies Foucault’s notion
of governmentality. Official discourses that position migrant women as behind and in
need of development are internalized and reproduced through migrant women
themselves. To avoid such ridicule and discipline, one must work to improve her
knowledge and her “quality;” in other words, one must become “modern.” In that
migrant women seek a means of remedying such shortcomings, we can see how
technologies of power thus merge with technologies of the self.
Indeed, to deal with the challenges posed in particular by text messaging, many
migrant women embrace a variety of tactics to ensure their continued cell phone use and
to resist marginalization. For some, this might mean making more voice calls – even
though calling is more costly – or relying on the reading and input skills of gracious
friends and colleagues. There is also heavy usage of pre-written messages (which I will
discuss more fully in the next chapter) that can be found in inexpensive books available

177
in kiosks throughout the city or downloaded from the Internet, though invariably the
women in my study received these messages from friends and then forwarded them.
74
I
knew one woman who insisted that about 90 percent of her text messaging content was
in the form of prewritten messages. Another informant stated, “The majority of the
messages I send are pre-written. Why not? It’s easy and convenient, and they can
express what I want to say.” In essence, with such tactics migrant women are “making
do” and creatively insisting on their continued participation in a form of “mobile
modernity.”

Conclusion
As Laurie Kendall notes, “Modernities are the cultural articulations of
modernizations as self-conscious experiences and discourses, judgments, and feelings
about these experiences,”
75
all of which are gendered, and I would add, cross-cut as
well by class, age, and place. In contemporary China, modernization has meant the
pursuit of wealth, beauty, and a comfortable life, and has brought renewed emphasis on
education, knowledge, and technology. All of these factors construct a discursive
context where mobile phones in the lives of migrant women have become articulated in
myriad ways to “being modern.”
For migrant women in Beijing, a mobile phone, as a material object, can be a form
of cultural capital. It can also serve as symbolic capital in that ownership of a cell phone
allows rural women access to an urban identity, however liminal. The very act of
possessing a phone is a way to assert one’s autonomy from an “othered” rural identity
and to feel part of a modern, cosmopolitan culture. In other words, mere possession is a

178
form of empowerment. At the same time, cell phones have a disciplining function as
they are situated within and reproduce a discourse that articulates possession of
technology and technological abilities to ideologies of progress, quality, knowledge,
fashion, and hipness. They also normalize and demand certain skills, literacies, and
etiquette.
As a metonym for modernity, cell phones reveal that technology is never neutral
and always works as a form of knowledge and power.
76
As Rofel states, “Though being
modern is an imagined status, it is not a mere mythical representation. People deeply
feel modernity in their experiences precisely because techniques of normalization are
secured in its name.”
77
In China, as the quest for suzhi melds notions of the individual
self and the national citizen as responsible for improvement and “development,”
powerful normalizing discourses and practices are implicated in notions of modernity.
Thus, as both a technological artifact and a “technology of the self,” a cell phone has
become a central tool in young migrant women’s construction – however imagined – of
a “modern,” hybrid rural-urban identity.

179
Chapter Three Endnotes

1. To protect the confidentiality of participants, all names are pseudonyms.

2. Goldstein, “Introduction”; Rofel, Other Modernities.

3. Rofel, Other Modernities, 12.

4. Interview with Luo Li Kun, Beijing, December 7, 2006.

5. Modernity is obviously a huge term that has various meanings depending on the
context in which it is used. Here I am distinguishing modernity from modernization,
meaning projects for economic development, industrialization, etc.; modernism,
meaning trends in art, such as the troubling of representation, that arose during the late
19
th
and early 20
th
centuries, and modernité, which refers to the aestheticization of
everyday life. For an insightful overview of these terms, see Felski, Gender of
Modernity, 12-13.

6. Berman, All that is Solid, 16.

7. Ibid., 15.

8. As mentioned in chapter two, migrant women frequently give these reasons for
leaving home.

9. Giddens, Consequences of Modernity, 3.

10. Berman, All that is Solid, 15.

11. Felski, Gender of Modernity, 2.

12. Ibid.; Hodgson, “Of Modernity/Modernities, 8-9.

13. Hodgson, “Of Modernity/Modernities,” 9.

14. See, for example, the discussion in Yang, “Introduction,” in Spaces of Their
Own, 18-19.

15. See, for example, Goldstein, “Introduction,” and Rofel, Other Modernities.

16. See, for example, Chakrabarty, “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History”;
Cooper and Stoler, Tensions of Empire; McClintock, Imperial Leather.

17. Hodgson, “Of Modernity/Modernities,” 7.

180

18. Rofel, Other Modernities, 9.

19. Ibid., 9-10.

20. Goldstein, “Introduction,” 6.

21. Ibid.

22. Foucault, History of Sexuality, 92-93.

23. Foucault, “Two Lectures,” 98.

24. Foucault, “Subject and Power,” 329.

25. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 136.

26. Foucault, History of Sexuality, 140.

27. Ibid., 187.

28. Ibid., 201.

29. Foucault, “Governmentality,”102-103.

30. Ibid., 87.

31. Lemke, “Foucault, Governmentality, and Critique,” 4.

32. Foucault, “Technologies of the Self,” 18.

33. Ibid., 19.

34. Bartky, “Foucault, Femininity, Power,” 65.

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid., 71.

37. Bordo, Unbearable Weight, 27.

38. Goffman, Asylums, 14.

39. Ewen, All Consuming Images, 76.

181

40. Ibid.

41. Baudrillard, “Ideological Genesis of Needs;” Featherstone, “Postmodernism
and Aestheticization.”

42. Bourdieu, Distinction, 56.

43. Ibid., 57.

44. Ibid., 170-171.

45. Bourdieu, “Forms of Capital,” 243.

46. Ibid., 245.

47. Rofel, Other Modernities, 13.

48. Bordo, Unbearable Weight, 16.

49. Yan, “Spectralization of the Rural,” 578.

50. Interview with Ji Hua, Beijing, December 2, 2006.

51. Of the four working women who were non-users of cell phones, two of them
were not allowed to have a phone, as will be explained in chapter five, and the other
two said they had no friends and rarely ventured far from their workplace so they did
not need a phone.

52. The inordinate amount of money that migrant laborers spend on their cell phones
has also been noted by Law and Peng, “Use of Mobile Phones,” 247; see also Yang and
Zhu, “Shouji.” It should be noted that the subjects in the latter study were in a slightly
higher socio-economic strata than the women in my study.

53. Interview with Chen Jingfei, Beijing, October 30, 2006.

54. Interview with Zhang Xiumei, Beijing, February 5, 2007.

55. Featherstone, “Postmodernism and the Aestheticization,” 270.

56. Interview with Luo Judi, Beijing, March 14, 2007.

57. Chandra Mohanty, Feminism Without Borders, 142.

58. Yan, “Neoliberal Governmentality,” 494.

182

59. Yan Hairong has linked governmentality to suzhi discourse in showing the
interconnection between poverty relief campaigns, migration, and migrant women’s
cultivation of suzhi. She focuses on migrant women recruited as baomu, or nannies, for
urbanites and how this work discipline is framed as providing the women an
opportunity to cultivate suzhi. See ibid.

60. Pun, “Consumption or Subsumption.”

61. As mentioned earlier, this is the title of Rita Felski’s book that sought to put
gender into analyses of modernity.

62. See, for example, Banks, Hair Matters; see also Kang, “Managed Hand.”

63. I should clarify that this policy was widespread in Beijing but apparently is not
necessarily the case in other parts of China.

64. Interview with Xiao Wu, Beijing, February 23, 2007.

65. Interview with Tian Ai, Beijing, December 12, 2006.

66. Interview with Xiao Xuan, Beijing, December 8, 2006.

67. Interview with Xiao Wu, Beijing, February 23, 2007.

68. Cockburn, “Circuit of Technology,” 39.

69. Ibid., 40, 41.

70. Interview with Xiao Wu, February 23, 2007, Beijing.

71. Felski, Gender of Modernity, 1.

72. Gendered discourses were also reported by Lemish and Cohen in their study of
mobile phone use in Israel. See “On the Gendered Nature.”

73. See, for example, Ito, “Mobile Phones, Japanese Youth,” 145; see also
Kasesniemi and Rautiainen, “Mobile Culture of Children.” 186.

74. According to Cartier, Castells and Qiu, in “Information Have-less,” a small
cottage industry has emerged for the writing of jokes and greetings to be sent via SMS.
Lin has analyzed some of the text messages found in manuals designed for migrant
workers in “Romance and Sexual Ideologies in SMS.”

75. Kendall, “Introduction” in Under Construction, 2.

183

76. Cockburn, “Circuit of Technology.”

77. Rofel, Other Modernities, 17.

184
CHAPTER FOUR: IMMOBILE MOBILITY: NAVIGATING NETWORKS,
SOCIALITY, DESIRE, AND INTIMACY

If you have a mobile phone, your life is much richer. Cui Yiping, Beijing,
December 4, 2006.

Leaving the rural village and traveling far away to a strange city for work is
obviously a momentous and potentially frightening experience for a young woman.
Most of the women in my study were from small communities where kinship and close-
knit friendship ties enabled them to navigate their identity rather unambiguously. In
other words, their sense of self was in many ways shaped by their position in their
family, their relationship with friends and classmates, and the familiarity of local
practices, values, and customs. Despite the transformations China’s countryside has
been undergoing throughout the last few decades, many women said their life in the city
was very different from where they had grown up. Even the handful from small towns
emphasized in their conversations with me the differences between Beijing and home,
often by mentioning the vastness of the city and the extent of its development. But of
course, the differences went much deeper than Beijing’s size and infrastructure. Rural
migrants who venture to China’s urban areas are aliens in their own country due to the
rigid household registration system and the concomitant cultural prejudices that mark
migrants as outsiders, as well as the foreignness of certain urban practices, food, and
even toilets. These factors, combined with their vulnerability to exploitation, mean that
in almost all instances, rural-to-urban migrants rely on some type of connection –
usually a relative or a friend in the destination area, but sometimes an institutional
intermediary such as a school or job recruitment agency – to facilitate their move by

185
providing help with employment, housing, and bureaucratic requirements such as
temporary work permits and identification cards.
Having a friend or relative in the city clearly helps in the initial transition;
however, it is common for newly arrived migrants to experience loneliness and
homesickness as well as extreme isolation. As one woman said, “When I first moved to
Beijing I was so lonely. I cried every night. Sure I had my aunt and uncle, but I didn’t
want to share these feelings with them.”
1
Zhang Xiumei, who had worked in a factory
in the southern province of Guangdong before moving to Beijing, told me that for
nearly the first year she was at the factory, aside from working she only stayed in her
dorm and did not go out even when she had rare time off. “I was kind of afraid…. I was
very naïve,” she said.
2
As mentioned in chapter two and will be elaborated below, even
migrant workers who have been in an urban area for an extended period of time live
what has been called “isolated lives,” due to work schedules, their outsider status, and
the tendency for their lives to revolve around a very small geographic area.
3

Clearly, then, a migrant woman’s emotional and even physical health in the city
depend on her ability to develop social ties with others and maintain relationships with
those she is close to back home. The cultural and symbolic capital accrued through
mobile phone ownership that was discussed in the previous chapter are obviously
important but not sufficient reasons for the value placed on the phone. A cell phone is
also a crucial tool for maintaining and establishing networks of sociality, particularly
for women who frequently either do not have or have only limited access to a fixed-line
phone in their place of work or residence.
4

186
In this chapter I discuss the way rural-to-urban migrant women use mobile phones
to navigate their social networks, express personal desire and aspirations, and forge
intimate relationships. Again my concern is not only with the way cell phones are used
for communication through the transmission of information, emotions, opinions, and so
on. While attending to these important aspects, I also examine a wide range of socio-
techno practices linked especially to mobile phone use and show how such practices
allow young women to access particular forms of autonomy and explore new modes of
identity. In particular, I theorize the mobile phone as allowing for “immobile mobility,”
which I define as a socio-techno means of surpassing spatial, temporal, physical, and
structural boundaries.
5
Immobile mobility is not to be confused with virtual reality, or
those spaces entered into through a computer-simulated environment; rather, it is rooted
in the material practices and constraints of the everyday experience particular to the
lives of migrant women, and perhaps to other populations that must deal with similar
restrictions on their control of space, time, and mobility. In using the term “immobile
mobility,” I also am not emphasizing the way that the mobile phone is frequently used
from a fixed place, thus negating its mobile aspect nor how low-income households use
cell phones as surrogate landlines that remain in the home.
6
Immobile mobility is as
much a subjective as a material practice.
In looking at migrant women’s socio-techno practices, I also ask whether in the
midst of opening up new possibilities for autonomy and identity construction such
practices possibly reify women’s marginalization, through solidifying their status as
outsiders and marking them as rural “Others.” To frame part of this analysis, I rely on
Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of social capital and relate this to Chinese concepts of selfhood

187
and guanxi (relationship). In so doing, I follow the course of other mobile phone
researchers who have sought to develop analytic categories through understanding local
practices of technology use as these are embedded in larger social and cultural
structures and meaning.
7

Social Capital and Guanxi
Social capital is a difficult term to pin down, since different scholars have used it
in numerous ways. It can roughly be defined as “the mutual relations, interactions, and
networks that emerge among human groups” and how these are important for enhancing
individual and societal well-being.
8
Often implied in the term social capital are issues of
trust, norms, and obligation. To Robert Putnam, social capital “refers to connections
among individuals—social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness
that arise from them,” and he is primarily concerned with the relationship between
social capital and civic engagement.
9
On the other hand, Barry Wellman, who focuses
on how new communication technologies affect interpersonal relationships, uses the
term “network capital” to define the “relations with friends, neighbors, relatives, and
workmates that significantly provide companionship, emotional aid, goods and services,
information, and a sense of belonging.”
10
While Wellman’s definition is certainly useful
and appropriate in relation to the mobile phone, in the following discussion I outline
Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of social capital in order to connect it with particular aspects of
Chinese society.

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Bourdieu and Social Capital

Bourdieu defines social capital as “the sum of the resources, actual or virtual, that
accrue to an individual or a group by virtue of possessing a durable network of more or
less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition.”
11
This
definition is useful to my analysis for two reasons. First, when discussing social capital
(and all forms of capital) Bourdieu attends to its uneven distribution and how it is
reproduced in and through people according to their location in a given field. In other
words, one’s position in society as well as one’s habitus (that which generates one’s
dispositions, viewpoints, tastes, practices, etc.) both enable and constrain access to
social capital. Furthermore, since people use social capital as a form of exchange to
improve their social and/or economic position, social capital does not just depend on the
size of one’s network but is also closely related to “the volume of capital (economic,
cultural, or symbolic)” of the members of a person’s network.
12
Hence, those who are
linked to others who have a large quantity of various capital, or resources – money,
knowledge, position, prestige – will have an advantage in the “game of society.” This is
not only because they might be able to draw on these resources, but also because
immanent in the social structure is the reproduction of both privilege and inequality as a
result of struggles which hinge on the actors’ distribution and volume of various forms
of capital. As Bourdieu states, “All positions of arrival are not equally probable for all
starting points.”
13
Bourdieu stresses that social capital cannot be reduced to economic or
cultural capital; at the same time it is never completely independent of these since there
is usually a large degree of homogeneity between people and their capital.

189
Though Bourdieu has been criticized as being overly deterministic and for
constructing the social world as a closed system that leaves no room for resistance or
broad social change, he rejects such criticisms, insisting that relations of domination
imply and activate resistance.
14
His notion of resistance is rather weak, however, since
he only defines it as exerting “a certain force” or “producing certain effects” and adds
that “the dominated seldom escape the antinomy of their domination.”
15
Bourdieu’s
focus on the unequal and exclusionary nature of social capital and his vague references
to resistance, while obviously pessimistic, are nonetheless relevant when looking at
technology use among rural-to-urban migrant women, perhaps the most marginalized
group as a whole in all of China, a country that is becoming increasingly socially
stratified. Whether migrant women’s use of technology allows them to expand their
social capital in ways that may improve their life conditions thus becomes a crucial
question. My fieldwork did not seek explicitly to measure social capital per se, but
modes of identity construction and struggles for autonomy are constitutive of an
individual’s networks as well as their position in those networks. Furthermore, while I
focus more directly on resistance in the workplace in the next chapter, socio-techno
practices that enable immobile mobility can be viewed as enacting resistance, in so far
as they refuse circumscribed material conditions and discursive constructions that work
to limit migrant women’s sense of themselves and the goals they can achieve.
The second reason that Bourdieu’s particular rendering of social capital is relevant
to this analysis is that he stresses the effort involved in building and maintaining
networks of relationships and how both conscious and unconscious strategies must be
used to initiate or reproduce these. Such strategies are aimed “at transforming

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contingent relations, such as those of neighborhood, the workplace, or even kinship,
into relationships that are at once necessary and elective, implying durable obligations
subjectively felt (feelings of gratitude, respect, friendship).”
16
When words, symbols,
gifts, and other material and immaterial objects are exchanged among members of a
group (no matter how large or small) this has the effect of reproducing the group as well
as excluding those beyond its boundaries. Thus, producing and reproducing social
capital “presupposes an unceasing effort of sociability, a continuous series of exchanges
in which recognition is endlessly affirmed and reaffirmed.”
17
The focus on exchange,
reciprocity, and group boundaries inherent in social capital is particularly relevant to
Chinese concepts of the individual as well as the importance of guanxi, or relationships,
in Chinese social structure.
The Egocentric Self
In contrast to the individual-oriented nature of western cultures, where the
autonomy of the individual is presupposed, many have pointed to what they call the
relationship-oriented nature of Chinese social organization. In traditional Chinese
culture, “the individual is never an isolated, separate entity,” and there is no unique
“self” outside of social relationships and the personal obligations that inhere in those
relationships.
18
As Hamilton and Wang state, “To be human in Chinese society is to be
linked to others—to one’s parents, siblings, children, and friends—and to fulfill the
obligations of those linkages.”
19
Fei Xiaotong, one of China’s preeminent sociologists,
has thus likened the pattern of Chinese social structure to “the circles that appear on the
surface of a lake when a rock is thrown into it,” where each person “stands at the center
of the circles produced by his or her own social influence.”
20
He uses the term

191
“differential mode of association” (chaxugeju) as an ideal type to describe this pattern
and to emphasize that the more distant the circles of relationships from the center
(oneself), the less significant they are in a person’s social network. Liang Shuming, a
contemporary of Fei’s, wrote that China has a “relationship-based (guanxi benwei)
social order,” where those who are closest are at the center and have a large degree of
mutual affection and obligation.
21
It must be pointed out that both of these scholars
formulated their theories of Chinese selfhood before 1949 and that they were basing
their observations on a predominantly rural society. However, despite the influences of
communism, industrialization, urbanization, modernization, and westernization, many
have still found utility in conceptualizing the Chinese sense of self as predominantly
relationally focused.
22

Chinese society, then, is primarily neither individual-oriented (and thus not
focused on individual rights or the concept of equality) nor group-oriented, but rather
“egocentric.”
23
The differentially categorized circles of social relationships “form a
network composed of each individual’s personal connections,” and since they stress
differentiation and hierarchical distinctions they imply different obligations, norms of
reciprocity, and moral demands.
24
At the same time, such circles are discontinuous and
highly elastic. As Ambrose King notes, aside from natural relations – for example
parent-child – “nonnatural relations are voluntarily constructed with the individual self
as the initiator.”
25
Further, an individual has a large degree of autonomy in deciding
whether or not to enter into such “voluntarily constructed” relationships, of which he or
she is the architect.
26
In theory any two people can form a connection either through a
shared relational category (such as colleague or classmate) or through an intermediary.

192
Guanxi
Closely connected to this relationally-based self-orientation is guanxi, literally
relationship in Chinese but often understood as “‘personal connections,’ ‘social
networks,’ or ‘particularistic ties.’”
27
Guanxi is a widely used term in scholarly and
popular discourse in China but is also one, like social capital, that can be extremely
ambiguous. Some scholars define guanxi solely in instrumental terms, equating it with
corruption, bribery, and using others for one’s personal or political gain. At the opposite
end are those who tend to focus on its more expressive dimensions and its connection to
friendship and feelings. Since coming to power the Chinese Communist Party has taken
the former view, equating guanxi with “feudal” thinking and waging endless campaigns
and enacting numerous policies to eradicate traditional bonds based on kinship and
locality and to replace these instead with a system of universal ethics supporting a
socialist morality. Nevertheless, during both the shortage economy characteristic of the
Mao era and the current era of marketization, the persistence of guanxi ties across
different fields has been observed by numerous scholars.
28

Certainly the differences in perceptions (as well as actual practices) of guanxi are
due to context and location. Research done in urban areas and in particular in the fields
of business and politics in mainland China (and Taiwan) tends to focus on the rather
negative qualities of guanxi while scholars doing fieldwork in rural areas are more
likely to highlight its expressive aspects. Some believe that more traditional notions of
guanxi still prevail in the countryside since the roots of guanxi can be found in rural
culture “where kinship ties and a tradition of labor exchange and mutual aid and
obligation have always been dominant.”
29
Even these scholars acknowledge, however,

193
that economic development has changed guanxi practices in rural areas, at least in terms
of how villagers deal with outsiders with whom they do business.
30
Either way, as Gold,
Guthrie, and Wank state, guanxi ties:
are based on ascribed or primordial traits such as kinship, native place,
ethnicity, and also on achieved characteristics such as attending the same
school (even if not at the same time), serving together in the same military
unit, having shared experiences, such as the Long March, and doing
business together. Particularly in the last instance, potential business
partners may consciously establish or seek to manufacture guanxi when no
prior basis exists, either by relying on intermediaries or establishing a
relationship directly. While the bases for guanxi may be naturally
occurring or created, the important point is that guanxi must be
consciously produced, cultivated, and maintained over time.
31

In this regard, guanxi can be seen as similar to social capital, in that both concern
networks of relationships that bring potential benefits and that must be cultivated
through mutual exchange. However, there are important differences between the two
concepts. First, many have pointed out that the mutual benefits and interests entailed in
guanxi must be implicit, rather than explicit.
32
According to Gold et al., notions of
reciprocal obligation and indebtedness make guanxi more than “simply an issue of
social embeddedness and social connections; it is a system of gifts and favors in which
obligation and indebtedness are manufactured, and there is no time limit on
repayment.”
33
They also maintain that guanxi is different from social capital in that
while it usually does involve a material aspect of some sort, it is also supposed to
contain feelings or sentiment. Thus, “instrumentalism and sentiment come together in
guanxi, as cultivating guanxi successfully over time creates a basis of trust in a
relationship.”
34
Andrew Kipnis, in his research on rural guanxi practices, most explicitly
troubles the binary often drawn between “modern” western cultures that are based on

194
universal ethics and where gift-giving is supposed to be disinterested exchange, and
“traditional” Asian cultures based on particularism, ritual, and favors, stating, “In
guanxi, feeling and instrumentality are a totality;” thus, “guanxi can be seen as unifying
what Western bourgeois relationships often separate: material exchange and
affectionate feelings.”
35

In discussions of guanxi, the affective component is usually translated as renqing,
meaning “proper human feelings,” but also referring to the relation-based mode of
human nature and social interaction in China; the cultivation and internalization of
proper codes of conduct that govern modes of social interaction; and “the bond of
reciprocity and mutual aid between two people, based on emotional attachment or the
sense of obligation and indebtedness.”
36
On the other hand, ganqing (feeling), puts
more emphasis on affect and emotions, and as such this term is used in connection to
guanxi only by scholars discussing its more expressive, non-instrumental forms as
found with close friendships and familial relationships. I should note here that some
scholars do not use the term guanxi when discussing the bonds between family
members or close friends since such relationships are supposed to be disinterested and
non-instrumental, yet they can serve as a base for potential guanxi.
37

Like Kipnis, Yan Yunxiang also did ethnographic fieldwork that examined guanxi
practices in a rural village in northern China in the late eighties and early nineties.
While Kipnis emphasizes that gift-giving, favors, mutual help, and so on were ways for
villagers to materialize ganqing (feeling), Yan shows that guanxi and gift giving form
part of a moral economy that interweaves friendship and kinship ties, mutual
indebtedness, and emotional feelings. Yan states that guanxi cultivation in village life

195
“involves not only instrumentality and rational calculation, but also sociability,
morality, intentionality, and personal affection.”
38
For this reason, villagers often
referred to their guanxi networks of personal relations in which they were the center as
their society, or their local world. According to Yan, this local world was made up of
concentric circles of relationships that were categorized into three zones: the “personal
core” was made up of family members and could also include very close friends; the
“reliable zone” consisted of good friends; and the “effective zone” (which he translated
from the Chinese yiban qinyou, meaning relatives and friends more generally) was
larger and more open, and could include all friends, coworkers, relatives, and even
potentially (but not likely) all fellow villagers.
39

In both rural and urban areas, guanxi must always involve renqing, which does not
imply close feelings but rather proper human feelings and social obligations. Because
renqing is “ruled by the principle of reciprocity,” it serves as a medium in social
exchanges and can therefore be seen as “a kind of resource or social capital in
interpersonal transactions.”
40
In rural areas, ganqing, good or bad feelings, must be
involved in guanxi relationships as well.
41
I bring up these differences between renqing
and ganqing and rural and urban guanxi practices because, as will be explained in more
detail below, they relate to both the types of social relationships formed by the women
in my study and the ways that they expressed these relationships as evidenced by their
mobile phone use. Both Kipnis and Yan acknowledge that the more expressive,
emotionally-based guanxi they observed in rural villages was the result of interpersonal
relations fostered over a long period of time in a tight-knit, stable (non-mobile)
community. Yan states that in such a setting “the cultivation of guanxi is more a way of

196
culturally constructing oneself rather than a strategy to exchange resources with others,
and renqing is more a part of a person’s moral world than an exchangeable resource.”
42

Kipnis also emphasizes guanxi production as a means of producing oneself, since in a
relationally-based concept of the self, “relationships are constitutive of one’s self.”
43

However, according to Yan, as economic development brought more interaction
between locals and outsiders, villagers began to cultivate temporary, instrumental
personal connections, where guanxi became merely a means to an end and renqing was
“regarded mainly as an exchangeable resource, something that is primarily instrumental
and less sentimental or moral.”
44
The question thus arises, if there are such urban/rural
differences in guanxi practices, when rural women move to the city what types of
relationships do they cultivate and in what manner? Furthermore, how are these
relationships constitutive of their identity? What modes of autonomy vis-à-vis their
parents at home in the village do they establish? And what is the role of mobile phones
in all of these processes?

Mobile Phones and the Social World of Migrant Women
As mentioned in chapter three, nearly every migrant woman I knew in Beijing had
a mobile phone. For women who often grew up without a landline in their homes and
for whom making a phone call usually meant using a public phone either in their
dormitory or at the corner kiosk, a cell phone brought a profoundly new way of keeping
in touch with others. It is not surprising, then, that in interviews and conversations when
I asked whether a cell phone had made a difference in their lives, invariably and without
hesitating the most common answer women gave me was that it was “convenient” (hen

197
fangbian).
45
Before replying they frequently looked at me with puzzlement or
amusement, wondering why I would ask such an obvious question. When I pressed
them to elaborate on what they meant by convenient, Zhang Xiumei’s answer below is
very representative. She had worked in a factory in Guangzhou for three years before
eventually moving to Beijing in 2004. Her dormitory did not have public phones when
she first arrived, but during her last year at the factory two telephones were installed
(for about 80 residents) that only took incoming calls. When I met her, she had owned a
mobile phone for about a year. As she told me:

When I was at the factory in Guangzhou, I wrote a letter to my family
about once a week. My family didn’t have a phone [until 2003] but our
neighbors at the front of the village did, but it was far for my mom to
walk, so I only called them from a public phone about once a week. They
didn’t usually call me. [Now, with a mobile phone] it’s very convenient.
Before no one knew where I was, for example. So, for a long time I didn't
keep in touch with a lot of people. So, now with a mobile phone, it’s really
convenient. You can send a text message, or call, chat. It’s good. Now
people know where you are. Before, [when you went out to work] no one
knew where you went.
46

Zhang Xiumei’s answer brings to light several interesting issues. First, no matter
where she went she kept in touch with those closest to her, namely her family. Still,
such communication took effort, both on her part and the part of her parents – writing
letters, scheduling phone calls, using pay phones, traveling some distance, relying on
good relations (guanxi) with neighbors. Once her family got their own landline, their
efforts towards keeping in touch were eased, but Zhang Xiumei’s were not until she
owned a mobile phone. Her story also reveals the difficulty she had in maintaining ties
with non-family members. Rural-to-urban migrants are a mobile population in the

198
respect that they leave their native place to seek work and because they tend to change
jobs frequently, often within the destination city but also between provinces, as in
Zhang Xiumei’s case. A mobile phone therefore provides a means of keeping in touch
with friends and building one’s social network that was previously impossible.
Expanding Social Networks

Most of the women in this study tended to occupy a very small social world, for a
number of reasons. They work extremely long hours, often 10 or 12 or even 14 hours a
day, some without ever having a day off and others with just one or two days off per
month. Work schedules are frequently extended by the constant pressure (or sometimes
demand) to work overtime. Arbitrary training sessions or, in the case of several of the
women I knew that worked at hair salons, mandatory participation in “teamwork”
meetings lengthens work days even more. Rare time off is usually spent attending to
such basics as doing laundry, catching up on sleep, or going to the market. Friends often
live in another part of the city or are coworkers who don’t have the same day off, and
many migrant women are reluctant to venture out of their local neighborhood alone.
Contributing to this small social world is the fact that most women tend to live in tiny
apartments or dormitories with as many as 18 to a room, supplied by their employer and
with strict curfews, or with a relative, often an uncle or older sibling who serve as
surrogate parents. Their circumscribed place, dictated by work and home, is
compounded by spatial and discursive power relations that construct the city as a
dangerous, foreign place due to their position as women and outsiders, marked by their
accent, their build, and their mannerisms.

199
The question thus arises – do cell phones enable migrant women to expand their
social networks beyond the small social world they occupy in the city? Of particular
interest here is whether mobile phones allow them to surpass the constraints of space,
gender, and social class and build their social capital as well as produce and cultivate
guanxi, which, in following Kipnis, is also constitutive of producing oneself. The
limited and limiting material circumstances of migrant women also raise the issue of
how a technology as personal as the mobile phone might foster autonomy through
allowing for immobile mobility, the socio-techno means of transcending rigid spatial or
temporal boundaries in interpersonal relationships and for self-expression.
One way I sought to understand the social networks of the women I knew was to
view the content of their mobile phone address books. These were invariably filled with
the names of current and previous coworkers, former classmates still at home or out
laboring in other parts of China, and a few family members, usually siblings or cousins.
In the instances where a woman had the phone number of a Beijing resident or someone
from a different social class, such as an “intellectual,” it turned out to be their employer,
a supervisor at work, or a staff member of one of the NGOs that serves Beijing’s
migrant population (except in two cases of migrant women dating Beijing men).
47
My
initial conclusion was that the small social world reflected in their mobile phone meant
that it was not expanding their social capital, at least not in a Bourdieuian understanding
of the concept. Rather, it was reinforcing Bourdieu’s notion of social capital as
exclusionary, serving to uphold distinct boundaries based on class and income, and thus
maintaining inequality in society. Such a conclusion aligns with recent research

200
showing China to be an extremely socially stratified society, with clear distinctions
made and boundaries maintained between different social strata.
48

However, placed in the context of the Chinese patterns of relationship building
discussed earlier, the content of the address books generates a different perspective. The
egocentric nature of the Chinese concept of self means that while of course the
individual has an inner reflexive psyche, the idea of someone existing outside of the
social relationships in which he or she is part is not a dominant notion. Aside from
family ties, the prerequisite for establishing a relationship is some sort of shared identity
or personal experience. When women told me who was in their phone, they never just
said “friends” (pengyou). Instead, they differentiated relationships by using the terms
“classmate” (tongxue), “colleague” (tongshi), or someone from their hometown
(tongxiang) in exactly the same manner that scholars who research guanxi in China
have described. As Mayfair Yang explains, in Chinese “the word tong, meaning ‘same’
or ‘shared,’ is used to designate a whole set of close personal relationships which serve
as guanxi bases: ‘person from the same native place’ (tongxiang), ‘classmate’
(tongxue), and ‘coworker or colleague’ (tongshi).”
49

Although some names in the address books were designated as those of “friends”
and these could potentially overlap with classmates, colleagues, and so on, clearly the
women in this study were using their mobile phones not only to keep in touch with
friends and family, but also to build and maintain their guanxi bases. Their small social
world thus also corresponds to the way villagers referred to their guanxi networks as
their “society” or “local world” in Yan’s study discussed earlier. This local world
reflected in their mobile phones was made up of those in their “personal” and “reliable”

201
zones and could be expanded to include those in their “effective zone.” This point was
driven home to me once when I commented on the large number of friends a woman
had in her mobile phone book and was told they were mostly “ordinary friends” (yiban
pengyou), meaning they would fall within this latter zone.
My point here is not to assess whether each name in the address books reflected an
expressive or instrumental relationship, in other words one based on ganqing or solely
based on renqing, for surely there could be a mixture of both even within a single
relationship. Nor is it possible for me to comment on the outcome of each of these
relationships – whether they were used for incurring mutual obligation through favors
and the like. What is important in light of the lengthy quote I cited by Zhang Xiumei
above – and similar stories that I heard in my interviews – is that the mobile phone is a
tool for migrant women not only to keep in touch with those they designate as friends,
but also to build a network of strong and weak ties that potentially could be called upon
in the future. The following conversation about the mobile phone diaries of Cui Yiping
also illustrates this point:
CW: This is a funny message. Who sent it to you?
CY: He is my fellow villager (laoxiang). We met on the train coming back
from Spring Festival. It was a long ride.
CW: You mean you didn’t know him before?
CY: No, but we exchanged mobile numbers and now we keep in touch. I
helped him get a job in the bar where I used to work.
CW: That was nice of you.
CY: Really? I don’t know [laughs].

Clearly, a cell phone made it much easier for Cui Yiping and the young man she met on
the train to remain in contact. As they were both from the same hometown, this
“natural” affinity made it more likely for her to do him a favor. Though not close

202
friends, she could probably rely on his help as well when needed at some later point in
time.
Still, for the most part the people whose names were stored in their mobile phones
were like them – migrant workers, classmates, family members – almost all with rural
hukou, thereby affirming their identity as “not Beijing people,” as one of my informants
termed it. While these women exercised their autonomy in maintaining and forging new
voluntary relationships, these were circumscribed by both their local place of origin and
their place as outsiders in Beijing. This is evidence once again that structural and
cultural factors always exert their presence in how technology is adapted and used. The
mobile phone in particular allows migrant women to expand their social networks in
ways that would not be possible – or at least would entail much greater effort – without
one. The phone, and for some the Internet, is part of their urban life and a medium for
constructing an urban identity. At the same time, while established norms of sociality
and relationship building may affirm their “ruralness,” possession of the phone and
relationships managed through the phone create a space “in between,” where identity is
neither urban nor rural, but is a fluid, hybrid mix that incorporates elements of both.
Enriching Social Networks
In addition to expanding their social networks, and perhaps more important to
their immediate concerns, was the way mobile phones had become a key medium for
migrant women to enrich their social relationships, and in this regard Wellman’s notion
of network capital is very relevant. For most of the women I knew, their long work
hours and minimal free time meant they had little opportunity for face-to-face
interactions with friends outside of colleagues. This situation contrasts both with their

203
lives in the village, where many felt bored and idle once they were no longer in school
and when their labor wasn’t needed in the fields, as well as with the lives of their urban
counterparts, who although burdened with school and myriad extracurricular activities
nonetheless have a social life due to these very activities. Even on days off a migrant
woman might find it difficult to meet up with a friend who lives in another part of the
city for several reasons. Unless an employer supplies housing in the city center, most
migrants tend to live in enclaves on the outskirts of Beijing where rents are cheaper.
Because Beijing is so large, crossing the city by bus can take two hours or more with
traffic and transfers. After working for two weeks without a break, it is understandable
that on a day off staying home and sleeping might be the preferred option, no matter
how much one desires face-to-face sociality.
Such temporal and spatial constraints, however, were overcome through the
immobile mobility provided by the cell phone. In numerous interviews, it became clear
that many women had friendships that were maintained almost strictly through their
mobile phone rather than through face-to-face contact. This use of the mobile phone
presents a striking contrast to the results of other mobile phone studies done among
more affluent youth in developed countries. For example, Rich Ling cites a European-
wide study that found that mobile voice calls and text messaging “are nearly a proxy for
face-to-face interaction with a person’s social network.”
50
In other words, these three
types of communication – texting, calling, and speaking face-to-face – tend to revolve
around friends that live in the same local area. He concludes that “there is immediacy in
mobile interactions. They are not used to maintain the more remote social relations.”
51

204
Scholars in other western European countries and urban Japan have reached similar
conclusions.
52

In his research among young people in Seoul, Korea, Kyongwoon Yoon found
that the mobile phone was often a “supportive communication technology” used with
relationships that are primarily sustained through face-to-face contact.
53
In my study,
however, the mobile phone emerged as what I call an “expansive communication tool,”
used not only for maintaining ties with friends who are now spread all over China, but
also with those who, although in the same city, are nonetheless geographically
unreachable. The mobile phone thus afforded the migrant women in this study a form of
immobile mobility, a virtual means of traversing the boundaries of long work schedules,
cloistered living situations, and far distances in order sustain their social networks.
Of course, several women I knew did send sporadic text messages to colleagues
with whom they interacted in person on a regular basis, but they often dismissed these
messages as merely for fun (wan). On the other hand, for many women, those with
whom they were emotionally close (or to use Yan’s terms, those in their personal core
and in their reliable zone) were often not in Beijing; in fact many women I knew,
especially those that worked in the marketplaces, told me they did not have friends in
Beijing though they might have a sibling. The major exceptions were among women
involved in an organization, such as the Migrant Women’s Club or Facilitator, that
sponsored activities specifically designed to encourage social interaction and friendship
building among rural migrants in the city. Clearly these organizations serve a crucial
role in enabling migrants to expand and enrich their social or network capital.

205
Since migrant women have so little time off, the mobile phone was only
occasionally used for “micro-coordination,” Ling and Yttri’s expression for the way
mobile phones enable flexibility and mid-course adjustment in scheduling and
transportation.
54
More often it was a medium for “hyper-coordination,” or “social
grooming” through chatting but especially through sending short text messages.
55

As discussed in chapter one, such expressive messaging, in particular “mobile gift
giving” or “digital gifting,” has been noted by many scholars researching mobile phone
use among youth in various countries. These reciprocal exchanges work to maintain a
single relationship or to solidify the identity of the group among which they are shared.
These messages often contain minimal content – asking if one is still at work or school,
how one is doing, etc. – or are chain messages. All of the migrant women in my study
sent both of these types of messages. Like their peers in other countries, in sending such
messages they followed norms of reciprocity and expressed affection to those in their
in-group.

Pre-written Text Messages with Chinese Characteristics
As discussed in chapter two, pre-written text messages are widely available in
China and can be copied from inexpensive books or downloaded from the Internet. The
contents of these messages are usually jokes, riddles, holiday greetings, and erotica,
which are written by employees of several Internet portals in China (such as Sina and
Sohu). None of the women I knew downloaded or copied such messages; instead, they
passed on those that were sent to them. Migrant women’s heavy usage of pre-written
messages presents certain characteristics perhaps unique to their particular socio-

206
cultural context. I have already addressed the first characteristic in chapter three; that is,
many women rely on prewritten messages to compensate for low literacy levels
(especially difficulty with inputting characters). Here I discuss the second characteristic,
which is the content of these types of messages, including how they sometimes contain
guanxi principles, the frequency with which they express longing or escape, and the
way they work to solidify rural-urban difference.
As mentioned earlier, guanxi ties are often established on the basis of a shared
identity. Kwang-kuo Hwang has therefore stated that when a person seeks to establish
guanxi with someone they do not know, they must “altercast” the relationship; in other
words, they need to find a link where there formerly was none. For this reason,
“interpersonal fatalism” is a common practice, where a new relationship is interpreted
as one that was “meant to be” because two people have a “natural affinity” (yuan).
56
If
both sides view their meeting as predestined, then they are likely to incorporate one
another into their personal social web. The following message demonstrates this idea of
the role of fate or destiny (yuanfen) in bringing two people together:

Having many friends is meaningless. If you have one really close friend,
they are worth hundreds of others. You cannot judge the value of your
friendship based on how long you’ve known each other. If you have a
good friend, and you spend one day together, the friendship may last for
one thousand years. You cannot choose the timing to make a friend. If you
can make a really good friend they will help you your whole life. Having
you as a friend is fate, luck, and a blessing.

Interestingly, this message was sent by a young woman to a young male migrant worker
from another province that she had met as they shared the bulk of a 17-hour train ride
home during Spring Festival. As depicted in the message, they had only spent this one

207
time together, but they continued to cultivate their relationship (which was strictly
based on friendship according to the young woman) via the mobile phone, feeling that it
was fate that they had met. The importance placed on invoking destiny in establishing
relationships was borne out several times in my interactions with the women in my
study. We did not share bonds of locale, school, work, or experience, but once we had
forged a relationship many women insisted it was destiny that we had met.
In addition to messages expressing fate or destiny, women also sent a large
number of messages conveying desire for a simpler existence or longing for a better
place. Sometimes they composed these on their own, for example, short exchanges with
a classmate reminiscing on their schooldays. Other times they sent pre-written messages
that were often humorous, as the following text that Cui Yiping, who worked in a hair
salon, sent to her friends on International Children’s Day:
Say happy holiday to those friends who are young but are sophisticated in
mind. Let’s free ourselves and break the rules. Don’t keep everything
inside. I know it’s very hard to behave like an adult. The holiday is
coming. If you want to suck your thumb, suck your thumb. If you want to
wet your bed, then wet your bed. If anyone tries to stop you, then bite him!

This message is playful in tone and is meant to be a release from the hard work and
drudgery that many women must endure in the city. Sometimes women sent silly
pictures that they had received instead of messages. Other messages, however,
expressed extreme longing or conjured up images of flying away or forgetting worries.
Such themes again show the mobile phone’s use for achieving immobile mobility and
for escaping, even if for a fleeting moment, from the realities of daily life. In this way,
text messages can become like the lyrics of a song, which listeners use both to construct

208
themselves and to mediate between their private inner selves and the greater social
world.
Such expressions of longing were also present in the large number of pre-written
messages sent that were extremely sentimental and used very formal language (in the
Chinese). For example, Chen Yuhua, a young waitress in Beijing, shared this message
that she had forwarded to a friend from her hometown who was laboring (dagong) in
Inner Mongolia:
A peony is the most beautiful flower. Friends are closest to each other.
When we became friends, we didn’t care about money. We only cared
about our hearts. After flowing thousands of miles, water will return to the
sea. Even now we are thousands of miles away from each other but our
friendship will last forever. The roots of big trees are connected; the hearts
of good friends are connected as well. I wish you good luck always.

Chen Yuhua said she sent this message because she knew this particular friend
was tired and homesick, and she wanted to express her warm feelings to him. Calling
was too expensive, so when she received this message she passed it along. She insisted
the message did not have any deep meaning; she merely liked the sentiment. In contrast
to Chen, during the course of my fieldwork it became evident that among educated
urbanites there was a feeling that “an urban person would never send this type of
message” or others that were similar, the reason being that they were too flowery and
thus reflected a low level of education. Somewhat paradoxically, the extreme formality
of the language made it especially subject to the critique that the sender was “trying to
hard.”
Another side of immobile mobility thus presents itself. As much as mobile phones
allow for the transcendence of material constraints and discursive possibilities, they also

209
potentially reinforce these. Disparagement of these types of text messages was not done
maliciously; it was actually more of a matter-of-fact observation. Nevertheless, such an
assessment manifests the same reification of urban/rural difference as the disdain
expressed in the popular media for rural migrants’ tastes and fashions as “course” or
“vulgar.”
57
Obviously text messages are much more private than fashion and not usually
subject to public critique, but there is a growing awareness in China that the bulk of pre-
written messages are meant to cater to the tastes of lower social strata.
58
Such
“segmentation of the market” speaks volumes regarding the socially constructed nature
of technology use, how power and discourse operate at the most seemingly mundane
level, and that as much as mobile phones allow for inclusion, they also can perpetuate
existing exclusions.

Camera Phones and the Construction of Reality
The sociality afforded by the mobile phone is only one aspect of the way it can be
used to embed its user in a world that goes beyond spatial and temporal boundaries and
thus enable what I call immobile mobility. A camera phone offers another dimension of
the mobile phone’s ability to be used for simultaneously representing and co-
constructing meaning and identity through the pictures one takes and stores. As Susan
Sontag has written in On Photography, photographs in general offer “an ethics of
seeing.”
59
In other words, our worldview is reflected in our creation of and response to
photographs of the extraordinary as well as the mundane. This “ethics of seeing” is
amplified even further in the case of camera phones due to their extremely personal

210
nature. In the same way that mobile phones have been called an “extension of the
hand,” one could argue that a camera phone offers an extension of the eye.
60

In Nancy Van House and Marc Davis’ study of camera phone usage in the United
States, they found, not surprisingly, that the camera phone was not only a memory
device, but also an “expressive device” for users to assert their sensibility of the world
around them.
61
Daisuke Okabe and Mizuko Ito, researching on camera phones in Japan,
also noted that people use camera phones spontaneously, snapping shots of interesting
views or mundane objects that reflect the user’s viewpoint on daily life. These are then
stored as a “personal visual archive.”
62
Most participants in their study expressed
pleasure in being able to collect photos that often only had meaning to themselves, and
thus, according to Okabe and Ito, the camera phone was “valuable as a resource for
personal identity construction.”
63

In their research, Okabe and Ito stress that they rely on a situational framework
that considers individual practices of technology use and how these are embedded in
pre-existing social and cultural meaning systems and structures. They thus develop
analytic categories of “technosocial situations” of camera phone use (e.g. personal
archiving, intimate visual co-presence, peer-to-peer news) that are an attempt to move
beyond approaches that view technological practices as emergent strictly through
personal interaction or that seek to generate abstract categories which can transcend
specific social and cultural contexts.
64

In discussing the camera phone use of the migrant women in this study, I also
insist that the particularities of their gender, class, and rural backgrounds, and how these
determine their life conditions in Beijing, are integral to my analysis. This is not in

211
order to adhere strictly to Bourdieu’s theory that photographic tastes, as part of the
larger realm of aesthetic dispositions, are constructed and limited by economic, social,
and cultural capital, though this may often be true. Certainly many of the pictures
captured by these women and stored in their phones did reflect their taste, yet these
images also demonstrated creativity, expressiveness, and desire that went far beyond
Bourdieu’s rather static notion of the connection between the working class and a
“functional aesthetic.”
65

In focusing on social and cultural context, one must also attend to the ideological
and unconscious aspects of visual representation. Because pictures do not so much
represent reality as construct reality, Victor Burgin has stated that all photographs are
manipulative, and as such, are ideological. However, when he asserts that
“manipulation is the essence of photography,” he does not mean that all pictures are
instruments of deceit, nor is he referring only to production techniques employed in the
studio (magnified tenfold in our digital era).
66
Rather, he is drawing attention to the
relationship between the viewer and the actual photo, and how this is never outside the
social and cultural politics of representation, where complexes of signs create meaning
just as much as they communicate it. Even the most seemingly mundane photos tell
stories, the meanings of which are never fixed but always dependent on the context in
which they are embedded.
67
In the same way, pictures also draw on deep desires often
below the level of consciousness. In Simon Watney’s discussion of the institution of
photography, he argues that modes of production and consumption of commercial
photography adhere to dominant notions of gender, class, and race in how they tether
meanings to images, and how both ideological and psychological factors are at play.
68

212
He insists that looking at social influences in photography must be supplemented by
discussions of desire and fantasy, and though his focus is on institutions, his analysis is
relevant to my discussion, as will be shown below. As he states, “Photographs are no
more, and no less, than fragments of ideology, activated by the mechanism of fantasy
and desire.”
69

The pictures stored in numerous migrant women’s phones illuminate the
importance of both the situated analysis of Okabe and Ito as well as the
representational, ideological, and psychological aspects of photography that Sontag,
Burgin, and Watney address. Women used photos to reflect as well as create a particular
view of reality and constitute one aspect of their larger construction of social identity
and personal meaning. In the following discussion, I will show how the relatively
contained social world of many migrant women was often reflected in the pictures
snapped and stored in their phones, how these pictures illustrated an extremely personal
aesthetic, and how they were used to generate aspirations. In so doing, I extend my
argument of the cell phone as a mechanism for generating immobile mobility to
transcend economic and social marginalization.
About half of the women I interviewed had camera phones, but this discussion is
based primarily on extended interviews and participant observation among about a
dozen women over the course of several months. As one would expect, all of the
women stored a virtual version of their social world in their mobile phone. In almost
every case where I asked to see a woman’s phone photos, the first pictures I viewed
were of the migrant women themselves, usually in glamorous poses. In the study cited
above by Van House and Davis, they also note that camera phone users snapped and

213
stored pictures of themselves for what the researchers called “self presentation.”
70
And
while this might seem somewhat narcissistic, China has different customs regarding the
display of pictures of oneself. Urban residents prominently exhibit framed pictures of
themselves (usually alone, in various poses taken at different locales) around the home.
In the case of married couples, the photos are just as likely to be of the couple together
as apart. At the workplace it is common for someone to have pictures of him or herself,
framed and sitting atop their desk or unframed and placed below the glass covering their
desk.
Such self-presentation reflects pride in one’s economic status and by extension
one’s level of consumption. Clearly, those at the lower end of the socioeconomic strata
are not able to participate in this form of self-display. None of the migrant women I
knew owned cameras, nor did they have the money to visit the professional
photography studios that have cropped up all over Beijing in recent years. A camera
phone clearly changes this situation and supplies them with one tool for constructing
and evaluating their identity. Though they would frequently show me pictures of
themselves and comment on how “ugly” or “funny looking” they were, they clearly
took satisfaction in their appearance, which had usually changed significantly from the
time of their arrival in the city to the time they were able to purchase a mobile phone.
“Self portraits” were not only contained inside the phone; many women had stickers of
pictures of themselves (alone or with a colleague) affixed to their phone via the “sticker
clubs” that can be found in stores all over Beijing.
In addition to the self-display found in the phone, the most commonly stored
pictures were of colleagues and family members as well as “fictive kin” (close friends

214
addressed by kinship terms, such as “big sister”). The pictures of colleagues were
invariably taken at the workplace or in a dormitory and rarely at another location in
Beijing, such as Tiananmen Square or another famous site. In some cases, women who
had cultivated good relationships (guanxi) with their boss often had pictures of them in
their phone. Some even had pictures of a bosses’ spouse or child, again taken at the
workplace. This could be understood as revealing that, contrary to most reports about
China’s migrants, not all feel that they are exploited or harbor ill feelings towards their
employer. Zhang Xiumei, who worked as a “greeter” at a photography studio, had
several pictures in her phone of her boss decked out in fashionable clothing. When I
asked her why, she told met that she liked her boss and that she was a “good person”
(hao ren). Other women may attempt to cultivate guanxi with bosses by taking pictures
and so forth, and in so doing improve their position at work, but the women I knew who
clearly did not like their employers did not have pictures of them in their phones.
Interestingly, when women had photos of family members in their phones, these
tended to be of siblings, nephews, or cousins. In other words, women’s social world, as
it was reflected in their phones, was primarily oriented toward their peer group and the
younger generation. Even when women went home for Spring Festival, they returned
with pictures of cousins, siblings, perhaps an uncle, and the family dog, but usually not
parents. Some women told me their parents did not like to have their picture taken,
embarrassed at their “rustic” appearance. Others said they hadn’t thought about taking a
picture of their parents. The pictures in the phone supported those ties that were
primarily of their generation in the same way as text messaging.

215
Much of the work that has been done on mobile phone images stresses the contrast
between conventional cameras that are most often used to preserve special memories,
and mobile phone pictures, which are usually of the spontaneous or the ordinary and
mundane.
71
However, when a population does not have conventional cameras, we
cannot really make such a distinction. Rare trips to a park or other sightseeing
destination in Beijing, birthday celebrations, and annual trips home were all captured in
the phone. Most of their pictures, however, revealed their small social world, yet they
also served as another means of constructing a hybrid rural-urban identity, displayed
and created through self-presentation, new networks of sociality, and virtual memories
of absent loved ones.
While the overwhelming ordinariness displayed in the majority of migrant
women’s photos was analogous to the ordinariness of their lives, women also used their
phones to transcend the limits of their world in several ways. One method was by
asserting their sense of beauty and aesthetics through their phones, often in distinct
contrast to the setting in which they found themselves in Beijing. Several women used
their phones to snap pictures of something they considered naturally beautiful, such as a
flower in the courtyard outside their dormitory, a favorite old tree or the blue sky in
their hometown, or even fresh fruit. These pictures were kept as a small defense against
the alienating urban jungle of modern Beijing. The virtual sanctuary enabled by the
phone as recourse to feelings of anomie is exemplified in Li Yun’s explanation of some
of the pictures in her phone. She had been in Beijing about a year and worked everyday,
10 hours a day in one of the large markets catering to foreigners. She did not
particularly care for the city but wanted the experience and the income afforded by

216
migration. Of the approximately 50 pictures she had in her phone, about one third were
of nature. As I viewed her pictures we had the following conversation:
CW: Where did you take this picture [of a flower]?
LY: Outside my apartment. Isn’t it nice?
CW: Yes, it is.
LY: Not like here [the crowded market].
CW: Yes, not like here. What is this?
LY: Cherry tomatoes! Can’t you tell? They are freshly washed.
CW: Oh, that’s why they are glittering. Why did you take this picture?
LY: Because they are pretty, don’t you think?
CW: Yes, they are pretty.
72

When I told Li Yun that I had never thought about taking a picture of vegetables, she
laughed and repeated that they were pretty, asserting her sense of aesthetics and
showing the power of the camera phone for expressing one’s personal viewpoint.
73
This
personal aesthetic was also evident in her reason for keeping a picture of an old tree at
home in her phone. For her, the beauty of the tree was important, yet the tree also
served as a precious memory of home and embodied a longing and desire for a place,
surely idealized, far from Li Yun’s current circumstance. “I look at this tree,” she told
me, “when I miss my home (xiang jia).”
Susan Sontag has said that photographs “lay claim to another reality.”
74
Sontag is
referring to the power of images – in museums, in books, in the media – to sweep away
viewers to another world, but what is equally important is the way ordinary people take
pictures to express desires and aspirations beyond their everyday lives, as did many of
the women I knew. Perhaps nowhere was this more profoundly evident than in
something that I came across numerous times, and this was pictures of pictures that
were stored in the phone. For example, there were images of famous historic sites or of

217
natural beauty such as a field of lilies that had been captured from books or magazines.
In such pictures, aesthetics merged with aspirations, and again reflected a transcendent
immobile mobility afforded by the mobile phone. In essence, the phone was used to
make postcards of the extraordinary, not as a treasured memory of a real encounter or
journey, but to virtually and vicariously experience a place and a possibility out of
reach. If having an experience has been equated with taking a picture as documentation,
then perhaps we can say that the opposite is true: photographs are not necessarily
“experience captured,”
75
rather they capture experience desired. This was also evident
in the pictures of designer watches sold daily but never to be bought and of fashion
models or of a favorite actor on the TV screen, captured in this manner since
downloading from the Internet was either technically or economically unfeasible.
Many women showed me such pictures without embarrassment but instead with
pride in their ability to circumvent the limitations of their own lives. For example, on
one occasion I was sitting with a friend at her clothing stall and was looking at the new
photos she had stored in her phone. After scrolling through pictures of the clothes that
she was selling, I eventually came across one that looked like Japanese cherry
blossoms. When I asked her with surprise where she had gone to be able to take such a
picture, she laughed, told me it was a picture of a picture, and then said with delight,
“You couldn’t tell, could you?” And the fact was, I couldn’t.
There are certainly several possible reactions to this aspect of camera phone usage
by these women. It could be viewed with an element of pathos – the pictures of pictures
are a material and psychological mirror image of the “pitiful” (hen kelian) migrant
woman and her tiny social world. Or, following Bourdieu, we may simply see this

218
practice as representative of a migrant woman’s habitus – a reflection of her lifestyle,
tastes, class, and education. As mentioned earlier, the pictures of pictures are clearly a
personal and portable aesthetic, captured and displayed in one of the few spaces that a
migrant woman can actually call her own. Yet, such images are not merely reflections
of a “functional aesthetic,” a term that ignores deeper levels of yearning and desire that
go beyond static class-circumscribed notions of taste and aspirations.
Perhaps such an engagement with simulacrum is evidence for Baudrillard’s
contention that the postmodern world is one in which we dwell in the realm of the
hyperreal, where the distinction between simulation and the “real” implodes and we are
left with nothing but surfaces without depth and copies without originals.
76
While
Baudrillard certainly overstates his case, he nonetheless calls attention to the problem
of according representation the status of allowing access to the “real.” Migrant
women’s representational practices, as illuminated by their deployment of their camera
phones, show that as much as images reflect reality they also construct reality as the
viewer would have it seen or imagined. With images of cherry blossoms or Gucci
watches, women are inserting themselves into the realm of that which they desire and to
which they aspire. Such desire is illustrated in the pictures of Guo Yanmin, a young
woman from an extremely impoverished village in Gansu province. Inside her phone,
in the midst of photos of her cousin and colleagues were also images of flowers and
trees that she had taken at a small park near her dorm, where she lived in a windowless
basement. As I looked at her photos we had the following conversation:
GY: Look at this picture.
CW: It’s an airplane. Where did you take it?

219
GY: It was landing at the Beijing airport. I could see it from outside my
dorm. I had never seen a plane before.
CW: Really?
GY: No, only on television.
CW: Oh.
GY: That’s how you came to China, right?
CW: Yes.
GY: I envy you [plural (nimen)].
77

My status as a foreign scholar and my location in a class (note her use of the plural
form of “you”) with access to conveniences and privileges beyond the reach of all of
the women involved in my research certainly are driven home in this illustration. It also
explains beyond any description I could offer the delicate balancing act that played out
in all of my encounters with migrant women between attempting to relate to them on
their level and knowing that there were insurmountable cultural and social barriers that
would remain, no matter how close we became. Such issues, while extremely
significant, have been addressed in the first chapter and are not my reason for
highlighting this exchange. Instead, the images of flowers, blue sky, high end sports
shoes, airplanes and the like that were snapped and stored in women’s phones reveal
the ideological and psychological functions of images mentioned earlier. Images are
“manipulative” in that they place the viewer in some sort of relationship, whether it be
longing for a home far away and far removed culturally and socially, or desiring the
trappings to which consumer society and the ideological underpinnings of urban
modernity dictate one should be entitled.
More importantly, I am arguing that such images also demonstrate young migrant
women’s ability to imagine a world beyond their current situation, and as such, new
possibilities for transcending spatial and economic limitations, certainly a first step in

220
individual agency and resistance to inequitable structural forces. This clearly was the
case with a young hair stylist I knew in Beijing. She could not afford a camera so she
used her mobile phone to take pictures of styles that she liked that she saw in
magazines. She also used her phone to archive the haircuts that she had done that she
was particularly proud of, and she was keeping these both to chart her own
development as a stylist and as a sort of virtual resume to secure a better job in the
future. The same woman who showed me the picture of the cherry blossoms had
snapped photos of some of the fashions that she sold in her stall as part of her
preparation for eventually opening up her own clothing boutique back home. These
illustrations attest to the creativity used by migrant women in deploying their mobile
phones to expand the realm of possibility in their lives, and to embrace an immobile
mobility that encompasses new modes of identity, autonomy, and aspirations.

Mobile Phones and Intimate Relationships
In this final section, I will discuss one more connection between new
communication technologies and migrant women’s identity and autonomy, and this is
in the realm of dating and intimacy. To communicate the significance of the way
mobile phones are shaping migrant women’s intimate relationships, it is first necessary
to describe briefly the historical context of marital arrangements in China as well as
how contemporary urban and rural practices differ.
Marriage Customs in China
Traditionally in China, marriages were arranged by parents as a mechanism for
security, control, and maintenance of the family line. It was not uncommon for a bride

221
and groom to have their first meeting on their wedding day, and children and even the
unborn could be betrothed. While such customs came under attack in urban areas in the
early 20
th
century under the influence of the May Fourth Movement, they nevertheless
remained strong in the countryside.
78
Thus, one of the first things the CCP did upon
coming to power was to institute the Marriage Law of 1950, which prohibited arranged
marriages, child betrothal, the buying and selling of women, and interference in marital
choice by a third party. Despite the updating of the law in 1980 (and 2001) and the
government’s numerous propaganda campaigns to publicize and enforce the freedom of
marriage, contemporary rural marriage practices vary greatly by region. Arranged
marriages, selling daughters for marriage, and even child betrothal have reappeared in
certain areas in the reform era.
79
At the least, in many rural areas young women (and
men) are almost always expected to follow the wishes of their immediate families when
choosing a spouse, although to what degree their marriages are “arranged” or “free
choice” depends on a number of factors, including the specific region, the wealth and
status of the family, the age of the couple, and so on.
80
When economic cooperation
among members of peasant households is stressed and marriage is seen as a significant
factor in the household economy, young people may be able to choose their spouses,
yet go-betweens are often used to connect families with children of marital age, and
members of the kin group take part in marriage negotiations.
81

To illuminate in more detail such regional rural differences, once again the work
of Andrew Kipnis and Yan Yunxiang is useful. Kipnis found that although in common
parlance rural marriages are often described as “free love” (ziyou lianai), young adults
he encountered disagreed, knowing full well that their urban counterparts often really

222
did find their spouse apart from their parents’ interference. As Kipnis states,
“Engagement plans usually were well worked out by the time young people were given
a chance to meet, and considerable pressure was brought upon the young couple to
accept the marriage.”
82
Still, even if rural young adults wanted to find a spouse on their
own, it was almost impossible due to societal constraints, and therefore most, according
to Kipnis, were grateful their parents had arranged a marriage for them. Sulamith Potter
and Jack Potter, researching in a rural area in southern China in the eighties, also note
the difficulty rural young people have in meeting potential spouses due to their sex
segregated lives.
83
Like Kipnis, they observed the predominant role of parents
(specifically mothers) in finding suitable mates for their children, the absence of any
type of courtship rituals, and the business-like nature of marital agreements.
84

On the other hand, Yan, in his studies spanning from 1989 to 1999, shows that the
particular character of the village he studied allowed young people ample opportunity to
socialize, and he stresses the increasing prevalence of “personal choice” and mutual
affection in young couples’ marital decisions.
85
For example, of 112 marriages that
male villagers entered into between 1990 and 1999, about one third (40) were “free-
choice.”
86
Approximately two thirds were made by introduction on the part of a
matchmaker, relative, or friend, and in three quarters of these marriages the couple
stated that they were dominant in the decision-making (a figure that showed little
change compared to marriages of villagers in the 1970s and 1980s).
87
Significantly, 30
percent of the “free-choice” marriages of the 1990s were between couples that had met
while away from the village laboring, in other words, they were migrant workers. In all
cases, parental approval of the marriage remained important.

223
Interestingly, in Kipnis’ and Yan’s observations of marriage practices in the rural
villages they studied, they each found that once the actual marriage preparations were
underway, the bride’s family often had the upper hand in negotiations, though they cite
different reasons for this phenomenon. To Kipnis it is due to the sex ratio imbalance so
prevalent in China’s rural areas.
88
Yan, on the other hand, discusses how during
engagement ceremonies betrothal gifts from the groom’s family are converted to cash,
called ganzhe or “converted bridewealth,” and given directly to the bride.
89
Because the
bride has a large role in negotiating the amount of this cash gift, Yan argues that this not
only gives the couple more agency in marriage transactions (since the bride is
bargaining for herself as well as for the future of her conjugal family), but also gives the
bride more power since she might save some of the money to make investments later,
for example through loaning out a portion and collecting interest on it.
90
While Yan
also emphasizes how the couple’s concern with establishing their own family unit apart
from the groom’s family is a clear sign of the decline of patriarchy, he acknowledges
that the negotiations for the ganzhe that the bride undertakes are not done for her own
gain, but for her and her husband.
91
Though he highlights the relative autonomy of the
couple and argues for the woman’s increased agency through negotiating and receiving
the ganzhe, the fact that she is doing this for the sake of her marital financial security
somewhat negates this last part of his argument.
I cite the work of Yan, Kipnis, and the Potters to illustrate that completely “free
choice” marriages in the western sense are not customary practice in China’s rural
areas. Though Yan argues for the autonomy of rural couples in contemporary China, the
detail he presents of the extensive parental involvement on both the bride and groom’s

224
side reveals that rural parents have a large say in their children’s marital choices. Here I
should also point out that even in China’s urban areas, though arranged marriages are
nonexistent, some type of intermediary is also quite frequently a factor in marital
arrangements, though this is more often than not a friend or relative of the same
generation rather than a parent.
92
For example, in Martin King Whyte’s study of
marriage patterns in Chengdu, he found that in marriages that took place between 1977
and 1987, 57 percent of respondents (all female) said their marriage was completely
“individual choice,” 11 to 43 percent (depending on factor used) indicated some type of
parental involvement, 60 percent said they were introduced to their husband, and 17
percent of these said their parents provided the introduction.
93
In a very recent survey of
marriage patterns in China, only about 30 percent of urban couples that had married
after 1990 met without the aid of some type of intermediary.
94

Perhaps Nancy Riley has most clearly shown the difference in rural and urban
marital patterns through her analysis of extensive survey data gathered from six
provinces on the marital patterns of married urban and rural women. While well over
half of the Beijing women said they had arranged their own marriage, in the rural areas
of the other five provinces only about one quarter of the women stated that they chose
their own husband.
95
While women in the younger cohort (aged 25-29) in all provinces
were less likely to have an arranged marriage, those from the poorest regions were more
apt to state that their parents alone chose their husband. In general, although parents
were still more likely than not to be involved in some way in their children’s marriage
decisions, parental introductions and influence were far more important in rural areas.
96

225
Migrant Women and the “Marriage Dilemma”
In China despite regional differences and in the midst of all of the changes of the
last several decades, marriage has remained a near universal institution and an
important milestone in a young adult’s life. This is especially true for young rural
women who, due to local custom, tend to marry and bear children at a younger age than
their urban counterparts.
97
Nearly every woman I knew who was 20 or older (and some
that were younger) told me that their female friends in their home village were already
married and that many had already had children. Sun Zhixin, who was 24 and had been
in Beijing for six years working at a variety of jobs, was typical in her response when I
asked her how her life would be different if she had never come to Beijing:
It would be very different. I would be married by now and have a child….
Many of my friends – their whole life is being a mother. I am definitely
different from them. I don’t want to live that kind of life because that kind
of life, if I have to take care of kids and cook, I’m not used to it. I
definitely prefer to go to work.
98

A young rural women’s sojourn to the city means that she is likely to delay
marriage compared to her rural peers.
99
Thus, as discussed in chapter two, the
phenomenon of rural-to-urban migration by young women has troubled traditional
Chinese notions regarding unmarried women’s chastity and parental authority in
marriage. Postponing marriage or evading an unwelcome arranged marriage are
frequently cited by rural women as reasons for migration. Unlike males who often
migrate after they are married, one third to nearly half of all female migrants leave their
home to work in the city once they have completed (or partially completed) middle
school but before they are old enough to marry.
100
Upon reaching marriageable age they

226
are expected to return home to wed and start a family. However, those who stay longer
must face the reality that when they eventually go back home in their mid-to-late
twenties they are already considered “old maids.”
For this reason, in the past most migrant women have returned to their village
after a brief sojourn in the city.
101
Still, there has been an increasing trend towards
migrant women prolonging their stay in urban areas and possibly never returning home.
This has caused some scholars and government officials to express concern about what
this means not only for urban stability, but also for the welfare of these women.
102
Some
women harbor hopes of changing their fate by marrying an urban resident, though the
odds of this are slim given the constraints on their associations with urban men, the
negative stereotypes urbanites have of female migrants, differences in perceived degree
of status and “culture,” and the fact that proportionally migrant women outnumber
single urban men in their age group.
103
Furthermore, there is a widespread perception
that no “good” urban male would want to marry a migrant and that if he did, the
difference in social status would lead to abuse of his wife.
104
In cases where dagongmei
have married Beijing men, there are further difficulties brought on by the restrictions on
legal residence, housing, family planning, and, if they have a child, the child’s
education.
105

At the same time, newly-urbanized women’s experience and increased knowledge
of the world make them less tolerant of the male villagers back home. Their time in the
city also causes their values to change, and they often feel there is too big a gap between
themselves and the young males who never left the village who are their potential

227
marriage partners.
106
Some also look down on male migrants, whom they perceive to be
ignorant and narrow-minded.
Liu Hong, a 24-year-old migrant woman whom I met early in my stay in Beijing,
expressed her concerns about marriage to me one day as we walked around Beihai Park
in the center of city. She explained that ideally she hoped to find a Beijing resident but
she knew this wasn’t very likely given her “low level of knowledge” (literally “culture”
– wenhua shuiping tai di) and her rural background. She did not want to marry any of
the men in her village, for the reasons listed above, but she also expressed doubts about
male migrants as well. If they had just arrived, she said, they were too “backward” and
“crude” (tai tu) while those who had been in Beijing longer or were older were already
married. Of course, her disparagement of the newly arrived male migrants shows how
the powerful discourses of urban=modern, rural=backward are internalized and
perpetuated by rural women and not just government and popular urban discourse, as
others have noted in their fieldwork among migrant women in Beijing.
107
Nevertheless,
Liu Hong’s anxiety about marriage and the possibility of finding a suitable partner were
very real and weighed heavily upon her (though she also acknowledged that she
recently had a “few possibilities”).
Many of the women I knew expressed similar anxiety about this dilemma. As
much as they wanted to stay in the city and find romantic love, the confluence of
feelings of isolation, discrimination, parental pressure, and the reality of the household
registration system made it likely that in the past most would have invariably returned
home for marriage, often one in which their parents played a large role in the
arrangements. Now, however, in China, as in other parts of the world, mobile phones

228
are enabling changes in how people establish and maintain intimate relationships. For
populations whose material conditions and mobility are highly constrained, these
changes can be dramatic.
Dating and the Mobile Phone
I have already elaborated on the small social circle occupied by most migrant
women. Outside of colleagues or former classmates, their possibilities for meeting a
significant other are severely limited. Organizations like the Migrant Women’s Club
and Facilitator try to create opportunities for male and female migrants to socialize (as
will be discussed further below), but only a small number of the women in my study
were involved in such organizations. Now, some migrant women, just like their urban
counterparts, meet future boyfriends online. Others use their mobile phone to place or
respond to a classified ad in a magazine, usually one geared towards migrants, such as
Dagong (Laboring). While the practice of young migrants in the city seeking pen pals
(a euphemism for a boyfriend or girlfriend) through classified ads is not something
novel, the mobile phone brings a whole new dimension to the potential frequency and
intimacy of contact once a relationship is established. Still, I only met one woman who
said a friend of hers used her mobile phone to reply to an ad in a magazine, and no one I
knew acknowledged ever responding to a complete stranger who sent a flirtatious text
message, as some of the interviewees in Pui-lam Law and Yinni Peng’s study among
factory workers in southern China did.
108

This is not to say intimate or even sexually explicit messages were not sent,
however. Obviously a mobile phone is a very personal possession used for personal
expression. Of significance here is the way the mobile phone via text messaging allows

229
young rural migrants to voice feelings they otherwise might not – either in a voice call
or a written letter – due to cultural norms of what is considered appropriate and a
discursive context which produces the social “fact” that rural women “don’t know how
to talk” (buneng jianghua).
109
Text messaging allows greater freedom possibly due to
the asynchronous somewhat disembodied nature of a text, but also through migrants’
use of pre-written messages.
110
In particular, “love” messages allow migrant women to
explore sexual identities usually repressed in their home village, where cultural and
social norms governing what a “filial daughter” should and should not do remain strong.
These types of messages run the gamut from the cute to the mildly erotic, as the
following two examples illustrate:
Weather report: From tonight to tomorrow morning, I miss you a little. It’s
expected that this condition will change into continuous missing by the
afternoon. Due to the effect of this low mood, it will change into a storm
of missing by sunset. The temperature of your feelings will drop to five
degrees (Celsius). It’s forecasted that this kind of weather will last until I
meet you again.

People often ask where paradise is. In fact, as long as your beloved is
lying beside you and caressing you, you are in paradise.

Many of the women in my study used pre-written messages frequently with
friends as well as boyfriends (as mentioned earlier), but they insisted the latter type of
message above was more the domain of males than females.
111
As I discussed these
types of text messages one day with a handful of women at one of the NGOs for
migrant workers in Beijing, Wang Xiaoqi clearly articulated the gendered differences in
texting, stating, “We don’t send messages like that,” referring to the second message, to
which all her friends nodded in agreement. When I asked if they liked to receive them

230
from a boyfriend, she laughed and said, “Sure” (keyi). Wang Xiaoqi and the other
women’s notions of the appropriateness of sending and receiving erotic text messages,
demarcated along clearly gendered lines, exemplify once again the disciplinary
practices of femininity regulating migrant women’s speech and behavior, as discussed
in chapter three. The pervasiveness of such discipline is shown through its power to
infiltrate even such a private communication device as a mobile phone. This certainly
does not mean that other migrant women might disagree with Wang Xiaoqi’s
pronouncement or even that she and her friends never send such messages. Yet, it is
more evidence that as much as new communication technologies enable the exploration
of sexual identity, they also perpetuate forms of power that regulate “proper” gender
behavior.
I should clarify that this example should not be interpreted as reifying a notion of
rural women as “traditional” chaste females in contrast to their “modern” urban
counterparts. Several studies have shown a high incidence of premarital sex and
cohabitation among migrants in the city and even among unmarried couples in certain
rural areas, though cohabitation usually occurs once a couple is engaged.
112
Evidence
from my own fieldwork concurs with such findings. Moreover, conservative sexual
attitudes expressed by urban women versus urban men are also a common finding in
research on sexuality in China, despite a rash of sexually explicit storytelling by young
urban women (e.g. Shanghai Baby by Wei Hui and Muzi Mei’s sex blog) that has
received attention by the popular as well as the academic press.
113

Migration thus enables new freedoms in exploring identity and relationships, as do
new communication technologies; however, urban life does not completely erase the

231
norms that rural-to-urban migrant women abide by, nor does technology usher in
sweeping changes in people’s values and practices. For this reason, more often than not,
when it came to dating relationships and mobile phones, what I observed was a mixing
of traditional and technological. In the remainder of this chapter I will relate three
stories that illustrate this blending of culture and communication tools. Each story is
slightly different, but together they form a portrait of the way socio-techno practices
arise within existing social and cultural meanings and structures.
Chen Weiwei was one of several women I knew at a local hair salon. She had
come from a village in Hebei province and had been in Beijing for about a year, and as
with all of the other women I knew, as soon as she could she bought her first mobile
phone. Shortly thereafter a relative at home told her about a young man from a
neighboring town and asked her if she wanted to be introduced. In relating this story
Chen Weiwei said, “I figured, ‘why not?’ With my work schedule it is nearly
impossible to meet a friend [meaning boyfriend] in Beijing.”
114
An initial meeting was
then arranged via web cam at an Internet café, with Chen Weiwei in Beijing and the
young man in Hebei. They chatted this way a couple of times, “just to see what each
other looked like and get a first impression.” After a few meetings in this manner, they
deemed each other suitable for a relationship, and due to the prohibitive costs of the
Internet as well as the inconvenience of going to an Internet café, all future “dating”
took place from then on via the mobile phone, with text messages sent throughout the
day, and long conversations until late into the night. When I interviewed Chen Weiwei,
their relationship had been going on for four months, and when I last saw her, she was

232
counting down the days until her boyfriend would be in Beijing for their first face-to-
face visit.
Chen Weiwei’s story illustrates several features of Chinese social relationships
that have been discussed throughout this chapter, including the importance of a
common identity in forging relationships (in this case a common province, which
implies common experience, even if imagined), the role of intermediaries in potential
marital arrangements, and the way rural couples often decide rather quickly on one
another’s suitability after an initial meeting. At the same time, away from the prying
eyes of parents, other relatives, and same-sex peer groups that serve to severely regulate
behavior in rural areas, Chen Weiwei used her mobile phone to achieve a large degree
of autonomy in pursuing an intimate relationship. On one occasion I heard one of her
colleagues tease her that she was “always with her boyfriend” since she always had her
cell phone on her body even when she wasn’t using it. Such a comment demonstrates
once again that the immobile mobility achieved through the cell phone is as much a
technological practice as a social and psychological mode of being and being in
relationship to others and the world.
The next story involves only mobile phones and an intermediary of sorts. At 25,
Zhang Meili was one of the older migrant women I knew and she had also been in
Beijing the longest (seven years). Like Liu Hong, she said that in the past she had
worried about her future, primarily because she felt pressure from her family to get
married so that villagers would not gossip about her being a “shameful” woman. Single
migrant women who remain “out to work” beyond the customary marriage age are often
the target of such gossip in their home villages, the assumption being that their reason

233
for remaining in the city is that they are either doing some sort of illicit job (such as sex
work) or are engaging in a sexual affair, or both. When I met Zhang Meili, however, she
already had a boyfriend, a young man she had met in a manner that illustrates once
again the particularities of Chinese culture as well as the constraints and possibilities of
the often substandard technology used by rural-to-urban migrants.
Zhang Meili had a friend, who I will call Sun Li, who was getting married and
several months earlier had had to return to her hometown in Sichuan province for some
preparations. Because this friend had a “Little Smart” phone, a less expensive mobile
phone with limited mobility (it only worked in Beijing), she asked Zhang Meili if they
could temporarily swap phones. Such borrowing and loaning of phones was a common
phenomenon among the migrant women I knew in Beijing and was quite different from
the co-present sharing of mobile phones observed among youth in other settings.
115
If
someone in their immediate guanxi network did not have a phone (because they couldn't
afford one or the one they had broke, got stolen, or couldn't be used for some reason),
they would swap or loan phones without hesitation. There were numerous instances
where I sent text messages to migrant women friends only to have a reply come from a
sibling explaining their temporary use of the phone or to have the friend reply to my
message using a phone other than their own (friends or relatives who borrowed the
phone were always dutiful in passing on messages). This swapping/lending/borrowing
of phones reflects not only the often quite practical use of mobile phones by migrant
women, but also the cultural norms of obligation and reciprocity explained earlier in
this chapter. As Zhang Meili said when I asked her about how she felt parting with her

234
phone, she replied, “It doesn’t matter. It’s what I should do” (Mei guanxi, shi wo
yinggai de).
Thus, Zhang Meili traded phones with Sun Li as a matter of course, and she
explained the rest of her story as follows:
Sun Li’s fiancé was in the army and he had a friend, Zhao, who had just
bought his first mobile phone. Zhao complained that he had no one with
whom to exchange messages, so Sun Li’s fiancé told him to contact her,
maybe she could help. Well, when Zhao finally sent a message, Sun Li
was in Sichuan and I had her phone. When I received his text asking for
help finding a friend, I was kind of interested, you know [laughs]. So, I
asked him who he was, how he knew Sun Li, and so on. I thought his
answers were acceptable, so I told him we could be friends. After that we
started exchanging messages on a daily basis, then several times a day,
and of course we called each other, too.
116

Though this relationship was initiated through technology, it eventually incorporated
more “traditional” forms of courtship, as Zhang Meili and her friend also wrote each
other letters and mailed some photos. “I had to make sure he looked alright,” she told
me. After an initial period of getting acquainted, just like Chen Weiwei and her
boyfriend, they eventually started dating solely through the mobile phone, until they
met face to face six months later. Zhang Meili explained that army regulations did not
allow much leave time so they had actually only seen each other a handful of times in
the nine months they had been dating. While I was in Beijing Zhang Meili’s mother
visited in order to meet (and approve of) her boyfriend. They are now engaged.
In Chen Weiwei’s story, a relative plays the traditional role of an intermediary,
and technology allows for spatial constraints to be mediated, though not erased entirely.
While the latter is also true in Zhang Meili’s case, technology itself serves as the
intermediary through a confluence of several factors. Chinese norms of friendship based

235
on reciprocity and obligation dictate that Zhang Meili and Sun Li swap phones. Sun
Li’s phone becomes an intermediary only because Zhao’s text message that arrives
through it is not perceived by Zhang Meili as coming from an anonymous stranger, but
by someone with whom Sun Li’s fiancé must have good guanxi. Thus, Zhang Meili
could feel comfortable in responding to Zhao’s messages. Aside from these cultural
factors, structural and economic factors are also significant. No one in China has a Little
Smart phone if they can afford a standard mobile phone. The Little Smart’s reception
quality is often poor, and they are inconvenient due to limited range, which is why
Zhang Meili and Sun Li traded phones in the first place. Certainly people might swap
phones for a number of reasons, but this particular story illustrates how cultural, social,
and economic factors give rise to contingencies that are particular to the lives of China’s
migrant workers.
In the third story I will tell, an organizational intermediary appears in the form of
the Migrant Women’s Club in a manner not much different from the matchmaking role
played by a church social or a speed-dating event in the U.S. However, technical and
economic constraints faced by migrant women are once again evident in how this story
unfolded. After my heart-to-heart talk with Liu Hong where she elaborated on the
difficulties of finding a suitable partner because of her migration experience, I did not
see her for a few months due to travel outside of Beijing and the Spring Festival
holiday. I had sent her some text messages and tried to call her but could not reach her
on her mobile phone. She had a terribly cheap phone that constantly dropped our calls,
and her phone often ran out of power, so the fact that I could not get in touch with her
and had not heard from her wasn’t unusual.

236
Then, out of the blue one morning in early April she called me, but because she
was not using her own phone, I didn’t recognize the number. She also didn’t introduce
herself before she started talking, and the line was full of static. Through much
background noise I heard a woman’s voice asking, “Kaizhen (my Chinese name), since
you are a musician, what is the best --- ?” Her voice cut out, and I couldn’t hear the last
word, obviously key for me to make sense of the question. I asked the voice to repeat
the question, having no idea who it was. Again, all I could hear was “What is the best --
- ?” “Sorry, but who is this?” I finally asked. “It’s Liu Hong,” she replied, slightly
flabbergasted. As I embarrassedly tried to explain that I couldn’t hear her clearly and
didn’t recognize the number, the line went dead. I tried to call back but got a message
that the phone I was calling had no power and couldn’t be connected. I sent a text
message, trying to excuse my lack of recognition and understanding, but heard nothing.
The phone call was definitely one of the more disastrous ones I had in China. About a
week later I received the following message from an unknown number:
My dear friends, today we formally registered for our marriage. These past
few days at his home I have been full of happiness and am on good terms
with his mother. Thank you for your blessings. The day after tomorrow we
will return to Beijing. Liu Hong.

I was stunned. How had my friend gone from anxiety to engagement in just two
months? Once Liu Hong was back in Beijing I was able to hear her story. About five
months earlier the Migrant Women’s Club and some other organizations got together to
host a singles party for migrants in Beijing. Liu Hong had gone to the party and ended
up giving her cell number to a few of the males in attendance. One of them passed on
her number to one of his friends named Wang. After the party, at first she received

237
several text messages from various young men, including Wang, which were “just
greetings and such,” as she explained it. After a couple of months only Wang continued
to keep in touch with her, so she decided to give him a call. Since he lived in Beijing,
they met in person soon afterwards and started dating, mostly via cell phone due to their
work schedules and distant living locations. During the Chinese New Year (in
February) they had some time off to spend together and got engaged shortly thereafter.
Liu Hong had been working in Beijing for nearly seven years, she had been
involved with various organizations that helped migrant workers in the city, and she had
a number of friends who could have introduced her to a potential boyfriend. However,
with her long work hours, lack of a fixed-line phone, and rising standards of what she
expected in a significant other, she had had difficulty finding a suitable partner, as
described in my earlier conversation with her. I am not suggesting that a mobile phone
was the determining factor in her eventual engagement, but the stream of text messages
between her and the young man to whom she eventually became engaged were crucial
to their getting to know one another when face-to-face meeting or frequent
conversations on a fixed-line phone were difficult or impossible even though they lived
in the same city. Immobile mobility is about overcoming distances of space and time no
matter how large or small.
It is interesting to note, however, that once Liu Hong became engaged, she got rid
of her phone, telling me it was too expensive and she did not need it. But it wasn’t just
that the immobile mobility provided by the phone had served its purpose, though clearly
it had. She also told me she was frustrated with the constant problems with her phone –
the poor reception, spotty coverage, limited battery life, and extra expense all

238
outweighed the benefits of the phone. Having been on the receiving end of such
problems several times, and the feelings of disconnection generated by the dropped
calls and dead battery, I empathized with her situation, even though it became harder for
me to stay in touch with her.
My research yielded numerous stories like those of Chen Weiwei, Zhang Meili,
and Liu Hong, and even more, such as that of “Sunny,” who, after leaving her boyfriend
in Shanghai to work as a vendor in one of Beijing’s large marketplaces, exchanged so
many text messages and phone calls with him that the numbers on the keypad of her
phone were worn thin and her monthly cell phone expenditure was about 350 yuan
(about U.S. $45.00 and a third of her monthly income – three to seven times more than
any other woman I met spent on her phone). Or Wang Lili, who helped her boyfriend
from her home village move to Beijing, but lived and worked a far distance from him
because otherwise she feared they would fight and breakup. They sent text messages
and called everyday, and she attributed their ability to maintain their relationship to
these exchanges. From these two women’s stories, we can see that a cell phone is both a
conduit and an insulator, and in both instances allows a relationship to continue.
In all of these cases, when I asked these women if such relationships would have
been possible without a mobile phone they invariably said it was unlikely. It is not, as
one of my American friends remarked upon hearing these stories, “just like Match.com”
or some other online dating service. These women were not using new technology to
cast a wide net in the hopes of finding a suitable partner. I did meet women who
frequently went online to participate in chat rooms and met “net friends” (wangyou)
who they eventually started dating, but these cases were few. The majority of the time,

239
as related above, when migrant women used technology to enhance their dating lives,
there was still an intermediary, just as in traditional Chinese culture. Relationships were
maintained primarily through text messaging supplemented by voice calls, with face-to-
face meeting occurring long after the relationship had been solidified via the mobile
phone. The transportable, personal nature of the cell phone made this immobile mobility
possible for women who grew up without a landline and who usually only had access to
a public phone (or no phone at all) in their living quarters in Beijing.
Here I should bring up the whole notion of a “dating culture” in China. In the
Mao-era although the CCP did its best to discourage traditional arranged marriages and
to take the authority for marital decisions away from parents, it still restricted and
monitored young people’s mixed sex interactions before marriage, particularly in urban
areas through schools and the institution of the work unit.
117
In rural areas, the nature of
village life, where everyone knows what everyone else is doing and the sex-segregated
manner in which young men and women were raised, also meant the absence of dating.
Even in the reform era until rather recently the government sought to inhibit a “Western
‘free love’ and dating culture” that would threaten the “‘spiritual civilization’ of
Chinese state socialism.”
118

As discussed in chapter two, since the early-to-mid nineties, the state has retreated
ever further from people’s private lives (except in the case of family planning) and
sought a compromise legitimacy through guaranteeing people a “relatively comfortable
life.” With market reforms and China’s firm entrenchment in the global economy, in
urban areas this has meant the onslaught of western fast-food chains, glitzy shopping
malls, restaurants, bars, coffeehouses and the like. Whereas before the work unit and the

240
family home were the primary sites for socializing, as Deborah Davis has noted, the
separation of the “locations of production from locations of consumption” has meant
more opportunities for urban residents to relax and socialize outside of the realm of
relatives and employers.
119
For this same reason, Yan Yunxiang’s studies of
McDonald’s in Beijing in the 1990s revealed it to be a popular place for young couples
to pursue courtship.
120
Thus, it is safe to say that a particular type of dating culture has
arisen in urban China not only because of “western” influence, but also because of the
growth of the private sector combined with young people having more discretionary
income. Shopping malls, discos, and fast food restaurants all provide a place for
adolescents and young adults to have a “private” life in public, away from the prying
eyes of parents and other authority figures.
However, migrant women in Beijing cannot access these public spaces because
they clearly cannot afford them, and as mentioned above, their work schedules are too
demanding. A mobile phone, particularly via text messaging offers this “private” life in
a public space (their workplace, their dormitory) and affords them privacy perhaps
heretofore impossible since they tend to live in communal spaces where, even if there
were a phone, it would be difficult to use and conversations would be anything but
private. It is not that a mobile phone is a revolutionary item, sweeping in and changing
their lives, a la technological determinism. It is allowing for here-to-for desired but
unrealizable freedom and autonomy in establishing and maintaining intimate
relationships. This particular form of autonomy might be even greater for migrant
women than their urban peers since most migrant women in Beijing are not living under

241
the watchful eye of a parent, although sometimes as mentioned earlier, a relative might
play a parental role.

Conclusion
The socio-techno practices of rural-to-urban migrant women that I have outlined
in this chapter reveal that the mobile phone has become integral to the way that these
women navigate their lives in Beijing. At the most basic level, the mobile phone is a
convenient device for keeping in touch with friends and family. It alleviates the hassle
of scheduling phone calls and relying on public telephones. It has also become an
important tool for building social or network capital, primarily as it is used to expand
horizontal networks of sociality and develop potential guanxi bases. Kenneth Gergen
has postulated that the cell phone challenges the western sense of the “bounded self”
through emphasizing the relational and “underscor(ing) the importance of connection as
opposed to autonomy, looking outward rather than inward, toward network as opposed
to self-sufficiency.”
121
In China, the mobile phone seems to supplement cultural notions
of self and autonomy that have long been in place.
Beyond its role as a transmission device, however, the cell phone performs a
significant role in rituals of communication through such practices as “digital gift
giving,” swapping phones, and virtual self-presentation through camera phone use. In
this chapter, I have argued that most importantly, the immobile mobility accessed
through the mobile phone allows migrant women to transcend myriad barriers of space,
place, and time, to express aspirations and desires, and to experiment with their sexual
identity. Several women in interviews told me that their phone had become like a part of

242
themselves, not an “extension of the hand,” but an essential aspect of their very being in
the city. Without it they would feel lonely and disconnected. In other words, their
mobile phone both reflected and constructed their sense of themselves in relation to the
world. In this way, the phone was an instrument of power and agency.
However, in closing I need to temper what might unintentionally appear as an
argument that mobile phones are going to radically alter migrant women’s material
conditions. As mentioned earlier, despite the increasing number of rural women who are
staying longer in the city, and perhaps permanently, the fact is that the majority still
return home after a few years. Whether their experience in the city translates to similar
autonomy back at home is still being debated.
122
Even those who establish intimate
relationships outside of parental approval are not always able to follow through on their
plans for marriage. As Ma and Cheng found in their ethnographic fieldwork of migrant
factory workers in southern China, many of the women who had boyfriends who
worked in the same factory eventually returned to their villages for arranged marriages.
They did this for reasons of self-protection, filial obligation, and financial security.
123
In
her fieldwork among domestic workers in Beijing Arianne Gaetano noted these same
reasons for migrant women’s eventual return home.
124
Thus, while migrant women use
mobile phones to transcend constrained circumstances in the city and to engage in
certain forms of autonomy, the question remains as to the long-term effects of such
autonomy.
Furthermore, just as the mobile phone allows for inclusion in expanded and
enriched social networks, at the same time these networks reinforce migrant women’s
identity as migrants, or “not Beijing people.” Their particular uses of prewritten

243
messages also potentially mark them as “Others.” It is not that the mobile phone itself
creates exclusion, however. It is because socio-techno practices are practices that are
always integrated into existing discursive contexts. I will explore this ambiguous nature
of mobile phone use further in the next chapter.

244
Chapter Four Endnotes

1. Interview with Chen Xia, Beijing, March 29, 2007.

2. Interview with Zhang Xiumei, Beijing, February 5, 2007.

3. Wang, “Nongmingong de ‘banchengshihua’wenti,” (Peasant Workers Semi-
Urbanization), 41-57.

4. Prior research on the Internet has shown that it serves to facilitate belonging and
community among certain ethnic minorities who feel marginalized in the U.S. See, for
example, Matei and Ball-Rokeach, “Belonging in Geographic, Ethnic, and Internet
Spaces.”

5. A talk presented at the Annenberg Research Network on International
Communication in April 2005 by Sebastian Ureta on the spatial immobility of low-
income families in Chile first started my thinking about this term. I do not recall him
using the term “immobile mobility,” yet later I learned that he had in fact presented a
different paper elsewhere with this term in the title. However, our uses differ. See Ureta,
“Evanescent Connection” and “The Immobile Mobility.”

6. See, for example, Fortunati, “The Mobile Phone.” On low-income families in
Chile, see Ureta, “The immobile Mobility.”

7. The work of Mizuko Ito has been especially influential. See, for example, Ito
and Okabe, “Technosocial Situations.”

8. Wall, Ferrazzi, and Schryer, "Getting the Goods,” 304.

9. Putnam, Bowling Alone, 19.

10. Wellman, et al., "Does the Internet Increase, Decrease, or Supplement Social
Capital?" 437; Wellman et al. distinguish network capital from “participatory capital,”
which is “involvement in politics and voluntary organizations that affords opportunities
for people to bond, create joint accomplishments, and aggregate and articulate their
demands and desires” (437). As Wellman notes, Robert Putnam and James Coleman’s
use of the term social capital is closer to participatory capital.

11. Bourdieu and. Wacquant, Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, 119.

12. Bourdieu, “Forms of Capital,” 249.

13. Bourdieu, Distinction, 110.

245

14. Bourdieu and Wacquant, Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, 80.

15. Ibid., 82.

16. Bourdieu, “Forms of Capital,” 249.

17. Ibid., 250.

18. King, “Kuan-hsi and Network Building,” 65.

19. Hamilton and Wang, “Introduction,” 25.

20. Fei, From the Soil, 62-63.

21. Cited in Yang, Gifts, Favors, and Banquets, 295.

22. See, for example, Hwang, “Face and Favor;” Yang, Gifts, Favors, and
Banquets; Yan, Flow of Gifts.

23. Hamilton and Wang, Introduction,” 21.

24. Fei, From the Soil, 70.

25. King, “Kuan-hsi and Network Building,” 73.

26. Ibid., 66, 67.

27. Yan, Flow of Gifts, 74.

28. Gold, Guthrie, and Wank, Social Connections in China; King, “Kuan-hsi and
Network Building;” Yang, Gifts, Favors, and Banquets.

29. Yang, Gifts, Favors, and Banquets, 76.

30. Yan, Flow of Gifts, 101-102; 226-227; see also Wilson, “Face, Norms, and
Instrumentality.”

31. Gold, Guthrie, and Wank, Social Connections in China, 6.

32. Both Yan, Flow of Gifts and Yang, Gifts, Favors, and Banquets make this
point.

33. Gold, Guthrie, and Wank, Social Connections in China, 7.

246

34. Ibid., 8.

35. Kipnis, Producing Guanxi, 23, 24; see also, Wilson, “Face, Norms, and
Instrumentality,” 166.

36. Yang, Gifts, Favors, and Banquets, 68.

37. Ibid., 111.

38. Yan, Flow of Gifts, 80.

39. Ibid., 99-100.

40. King, “Kuan-hsi and Network Building,” 75.

41. Yang, Gifts, Favors, and Banquets, 141.

42. Yan, Flow of Gifts, 227-228.

43. Kipnis, Producing Guanxi, 8.

44. Yan, Flow of Gifts, 227.

45. Several studies have found that female mobile phone users often emphasize
safety as a reason for buying a cell phone. For example, in a 1998 survey of female cell
phone users in the U.S., the top reason given for owning a mobile phone (44%) was
“communications in an emergency” (cited in Robbins and Turner, “Popular, Pragmatic
and Problematic,” 84). See also, Castells et al., Mobile Communication and Society, 45.
Interestingly, none of the women I spoke with ever mentioned safety or security as
reasons for having a mobile phone.

46. Interview with Zhang Xiumei, Beijing, February 5, 2007.

47. In China, the term “intellectual” has traditionally been used to describe anyone
who is educated, meaning those who are not workers, peasants, or merchants.

48. See, for example, Rosen, "State of Youth” and Zang, "Social Resources, Class
Habitus.” For historical precedents, see Watson, Class and Social Stratification. In
Chinese, the most authoritative study (and one that my Chinese colleagues frequently
mentioned in discussions) is the volume edited by Lu, Dangdai Zhongguo Shehui
Jieceng Yanjiu Baogao.

49. Yang, Gifts, Favors, and Banquets, 111.

247

50. Ling, Mobile Connection, 111.

51. Ibid.

52. See, for example, Ito, “Personal Portable Pedestrian: Lessons from Japanese
Mobile Phone Use;” see also Katz and Aakhus, Perpetual Contact.

53. Yoon, “Retraditionalizing the Mobile,” 330-331.

54. Ling and Yttri “Hyper-coordination via Mobile Phones,” 139.

55. Ibid., 140.

56. Hwang, “Face and Favor,” 963.

57. Lei, “Rural Taste, Urban Fashions.”

58. Cartier, Castells, and Qiu, “Information Have-less,” 21.

59. Sontag, On Photography, 3.

60. In fact, in the research cited below by Okabe and Ito, one participant stated,
“The camera phone is my eye.” “Everyday Contexts,” 90.

61. Van House and Davis, “Social Life of Cameraphone Images.”

62. Okabe and Ito, “Everyday Contexts,” 87.

63. Ibid., 90.

64. Ibid., 86.

65. Bourdieu, “Social Definition of Photography,” 172.

66. Burgin, “Art, Common Sense and Photography,” 41.

67. Ibid., 48.

68. Watney, “On the Institutions of Photography.”

69. Ibid., 159.

70. Van House and Davis, “Social Life of Cameraphone Images.”

248

71. Okabe and Ito, “Everyday Contexts;” Riviére, “Mobile Camera Phones.”

72. Interview with Li Yun, Beijing, April 4, 2007.

73. Okabe and Ito also stress the significance of the highly personalized viewpoint
expressed through images stored in mobile phones.

74. Sontag, On Photography, 16.

75. Ibid., 3.

76. Baudrillard, “Simulacra and Simulations.”

77. Interview with Guo Yanmin, Beijing, May 31, 2007.

78. The May Fourth Movement took place in China during the early 20th century
and was an urban intellectual movement which emphasized the rejection of traditional
Confucian Chinese culture and the adoption of western modes of science, equality, and
democracy in order for China to regain its position on the world stage.

79. Judd noted the role of community leaders in arranging marriages for young
women with no brothers in the village she studied in northern China, Gender and
Power, 181; Davis and Harrell, “Introduction: The Impact of Post-Mao Reforms on
Family Life,” 10.

80. Riley, "Interwoven Lives.”

81. Johnson, “ Family Strategies and Economic Transformation,” 118.

82. Kipnis, Producing Guanxi, 137.

83. Potter and Potter, China's Peasants, 199.

84. Ibid. 197.

85. Yan, Flow of Gifts, 40; See also Yan, “Courtship, Love and Premarital Sex,”
and Private Life Under Socialism.

86. Yan, “Courtship, Love and Premarital Sex,” 32.

87. Ibid., 33.

249

88. Kipnis, Producing Guanxi, 88. China has one of the highest sex ratio
imbalances in the world, particularly in rural areas due to lack of a social welfare
system for the elderly and traditional parental preference for boys which have led to sex
selective abortion and female infanticide due to the one-child policy.

89. Yan, Flow of Gifts, 180.

90. Ibid., 195.

91. Ibid., 198.

92. Xu, “Social Origins of Historical Changes,” 45.

93. Whyte, “Changes in Mate Choice,” 184-185.

94. Pan et al., Dangdai Zhongguoren, 163.

95. Riley, "Interwoven Lives,” 794; the exact percentages are: Liaoning, 20;
Shandong, 27; Guangdong, 25; Guizhou, 26; Gansu, 24.

96. Ibid., 798.

97. Davis and Harrell, “Introduction: The Impact of Post-Mao Reforms on Family
Life,” 10. Though the legal minimum age for marriage for men and women is 22 and
20, respectively, in certain villages the bride and groom might be even younger as a
result of the economic reforms. As Chan, Madsen, and Unger found in their study of
Chen village near the Hong Kong border, some parents have reverted to traditional
thinking where early marriages are seen as a sign of a prosperous family, since less
well-off families need to delay the marriage of their offspring in order to accumulate
finances for the marriage costs. Some villagers surmised, however, that the reason for
the early marriages was an increase in pregnancies out of wedlock, Chen Village under
Mao and Deng, 297. In her study of a southern market town Sui also noted an instance
of parents marrying off their son early so that he could receive the family wealth,
“Reconstituting Dowry and Brideprice,” 181.

98. Interview with Sun Zhixin, Beijing, April 15, 2007.

99. Zheng, Waichu Jingli, 195-199.

100. These patterns vary by province and depend on a number of factors,
including traditional views about female morality and chastity. See, for example,
Roberts, Nongcun Funü.

101. Fan, “Out to the City,” 179; Tan, “Leaving Home and Coming Back,” 251.

250

102. Tan, “Leaving Home and Coming Back,” 252. Xie Lihua, the founder of the
Beijing Cultural Development Center for Rural Women, called the increasing number
of rural women remaining in Beijing well into their late twenties and early thirties a
growing social crisis (as cited in Jacka, Rural Women, 154).

103. See, for example, Beynon, “Dilemmas of the Heart;” Luo et al. “Migration
Experience of Young Women.”

104. Beynon, “Dilemmas of the Heart,” 143; Gaetano, “Filial Daughters,” 288.

105. Jacka, Rural Women, 87-91; 93.

106. Beynon, “Dilemmas of the Heart,” 142; Luo et al., “Migration Experience of
Young Women,” 237.

107. See, for example, Gaetano, “Filial Daughters;” Jacka, Rural Women.

108. Law and Peng, “Use of Mobile Phones,” 252-254. Pertierra found this
practice to be quite common in the Philippines. See “Mobile Phones, Identity and
Discursive Intimacy,” 35-36.

109. For a discussion of rural women and “knowing how to talk” see Jacka, Rural
Women, 19.

110. The “safety” provided by text messaging for the relaying of intimate feelings
among youth has been reported by scholars researching in a variety of contexts. See, for
example, Ellwood-Clatyon, “Virtual Strangers;” see also, Prøitz, “Intimacy Fiction.”

111. Ma and Cheng noted similar gender differences in love text messages in their
research among factory workers in southern China, see “‘Naked Bodies,” 8.

112. Friedman, “Spoken Pleasures;” Jacka, Rural Women; Yan, Flow of Gifts and
Private Life.

113. Pan, “Transformations in the Primary Life Cycle,” 22-23, 35; see also Farrer,
“Sexual Citizenship” in the same volume. In the popular press, see, for example, Beech,
“Sex and the Single Chinese.”

114. Interview with Chen Weiwei, Beijing, April 24, 2007.

115. See, for example, Weilenmann and Larsson, “Local Use and Sharing.”

116. Interview with Zhang Meili, Beijing, December 12, 2006.

251

117. Whyte, “Changes in Mate Choice,” 205-207.

118. Xu, “Social Origins of Historical Changes,” 39.

119. Davis, “Introduction: A Revolution in Consumption,” 12.
120. Yan, “McDonald’s in Beijing.”

121. Gergen, “Self and Community,” 111.

122. See, for example, Connelly et al., “Waichu Dagong dui Nongcun Funü;” Fan,
“Out to the City;” Murphy, How Migrant Labor is Changing Rural China.

123. Ma and Cheng, “Naked Bodies,” 16-18.

124. Gaetano, “Filial Daughters.”

252
CHAPTER FIVE: “TECHNOLOGIES OF FREEDOM?”:
1
MOBILE PHONES,
RESISTANCE, AND SURVEILLANCE IN THE WORKPLACE

It may be that no technology has done more to give individuals freedom
than the mobile phone. James Katz.
2

They do whatever I tell them to do. I don’t need to ask them. I say it and
they do it. That’s how it is. Manager, Shuru Ziliao Company, Beijing, May
24, 2007.

I begin with these two seemingly disparate quotes in order to draw attention to
perhaps the central contradiction embodied in mobile phones: the dreams of freedom
they inspire due to their ability to enable users “anywhere, anytime” to surpass the
boundaries of space and time, coupled with the more sobering reality that they, like all
technologies, can be utilized to enact and reinforce already existing relations of
domination and subordination. Such a paradox is not unique to the mobile phone. In his
seminal essay “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” Langdon Winner noted, “Scarcely a new
invention comes along that someone doesn’t proclaim it as the salvation of a free
society.”
3
Then, in answer to the rhetorical question posed in the title of his essay,
Winner uses numerous examples to show that indeed “politics,” which he defines as
“arrangements of power and authority in human associations as well as the activities
that take place within those arrangements,” are always present as technologies become
embedded and appropriated within a social system.
4
In this chapter I explore how
mobile phones, as artifacts with politics, are implicated in various relationships of
power through focusing on one particular site: labor.
As mentioned earlier, the majority of the women involved in this study could be
classified as youth or young adults. However, their lives are quite distinct from their

253
peers whose mobile phone use has been researched extensively in Scandinavia, Western
Europe, Japan, and Korea. They do not enjoy the personal freedoms of these youth
populations or those of Chinese urban youth, yet at the same time they are not subject to
the typical modes of parental and school organization and control to which these youth
must submit. Their parents are hundreds of miles away, and aside from the women in
the computer course, most of the women in this study were not attending any type of
schooling. Nevertheless, in the workplace they must contend with myriad regulations
that are often far more stringent than those associated more generally with home and
school. Failure to comply can carry rather severe consequences because migrants in
general lack legal protection and female migrants in particular are discursively
constructed as a “weak social group” (ruanruo quanti).
5
Cultural traditions that instruct
rural woman to be submissive, “dutiful daughters” and institutionalized gender
discrimination often position migrant women in the workplace in parent-child type
relationships governed by patriarchal modes of authority and control.
6
However,
contrary to media reports and popular discourses that perpetuate a myth of migrant
women as “passive” and “compliant,” many women actively resist attempts by
employers to mold their identity as dagongmei.
Such resistance can take several forms, from simply quitting an especially
exploitative job, to calling on the legal assistance of an NGO. Of course, neither of
these is always feasible. Some women will not leave a job, no matter how terrible the
conditions, because they believe they won’t be able to find a better job and because a
favorite trick of employers is to refuse to pay any wages to an employee who quits. I
witnessed this firsthand at one of the restaurants where I visited several times when I

254
happened to show up one day just as two migrant women that I knew decided they were
leaving: they could no longer take the grueling hours and isolated living conditions.
Though they had both been working for three months without a day off, their boss
refused to give them any of their salary. I then accompanied them to another restaurant
in the center of the city where a friend of theirs worked and where it was uncertain
whether the conditions would be any better. Though they clearly had exercised agency
in quitting (one of them told me, “I must leave. I can’t take it anymore”), they also felt
they had “nothing” (mei shenme). In such cases of exploitation, or where even physical
abuse takes place, women who seek legal assistance from an NGO are a very small
minority. Many migrant women are unaware of or not involved in the NGOs that serve
the migrant community.
As more and more migrant women have cell phones, they are increasingly using
them as tools of socio-techno resistance in the labor sphere. In all of the workplaces
where I conducted fieldwork, mobile phones in the hands of migrant women and their
employers were often a conspicuous sight (except for restaurants, which will be
explained below). At work, women (and men) use their phones for myriad reasons and
in ways that are both sanctioned and prohibited according to regulations set down by
employers. Indeed, the ubiquity of cell phones means that at nearly every worksite there
are explicit rules as well as tacit protocols regarding mobile phone usage. Some
employers ban cell phones outright while others allow their use as long as it does not
interfere with job responsibilities. Still others use mobile phones as a means of
furthering their ability to monitor or even harass workers. In the course of my research,
it thus became clear that cell phones are not just a medium for communication,

255
entertainment, or self-presentation, though of course they can be utilized for all of these
purposes. Of equal significance within the context of migrant women and labor is the
way mobile phones become implicated in overt as well as subtle struggles over
individual autonomy and control, thereby bringing into sharp focus the unequal
relationships that exist between migrant women and their bosses and the larger cultural
and structural forces that keep migrant women in an economically marginalized
position.
In this chapter, to examine these issues I will first briefly discuss macro-level
analyses of new communication technologies and control in China. Then, in contrast to
such top-down analyses of power, as in chapter three I utilize Michel Foucault’s
conceptualization of power and add Michel De Certeau’s notion of tactics and strategies
to discuss how migrant women use mobile phones to resist authority as well as reify
asymmetrical power relations. In discussing such resistance (or lack thereof) I focus on
two specific worksites – restaurants and marketplaces – to argue, following Linda
Martín Alcoff, that a woman’s position in a fluid matrix of ideologies, practices, habits,
and language will shape her gendered subjectivity as well as her ability to exercise
autonomy and agency. A key point of my argument is that a cell phone at work, whether
it is used or not, can produce a sense of self in a space where notions of individuality
and personal autonomy are often suppressed.
Following this discussion I turn to how employers also utilize mobile phones for
their own purposes of surveillance and control, yet I do not frame my analysis based on
particular worksites. Instead, I argue that the specific power relations that inhere in the
system of rural-to-urban migrant labor create the existential conditions for mobile

256
phone surveillance. In the last section I will touch on the issue of whether migrant
women use cell phones to resist their low economic status, in other words, whether
phones are used to increase income or find better employment. Throughout this chapter
it will be shown that in the everyday lives of migrant women at work, mobile phones
become central actors in a quotidian dialectic of freedom and control.

Cell Phones and Surveillance in China – A Top-Down View
Analyses of new communication technologies and their role in control and
surveillance in China usually approach the issue by looking at the Chinese
government’s efforts to censor information, stifle dissent, and maintain “socialist
morality.” Perhaps the most obvious example of this approach is research on the “Great
Firewall,” or the government’s protracted endeavor to limit, through technological and
human means, the content of the Internet in China.
7
Recently, the state’s attempt to
regulate and monitor mobile phone content, particularly text messages, has also come
under scrutiny. For example, Jia Lu and Ian Weber make a case for the government’s
exercise of what they term instrumental (coercive) and structural (regulatory) power in
monitoring SMS and punishing those who use text messaging inappropriately (e.g., to
spread rumors during the SARS epidemic).
8

Jack Qiu has also written about what he calls the “IT industrial complex” in
China, which includes a system of “keyword-based filtering and state-led ‘broadcasting’
through mobile messaging.”
9
He shows how because the telecom companies are
government-owned, the infrastructure through which all SMS and MMS travel are
easily susceptible to state-monitoring and theoretically could be stored in a state-owned

257
database.
10
Giving credence to Qiu’s claim, at the World Economic Forum in Davos,
Switzerland in January 2008, the CEO of China Mobile, Wang Jianzhou, revealed that
the company had unlimited access to its customers’ personal information – stating “We
know who you are, but also where you are” – and that it would hand over such
information as requested by the Chinese government.
11
Qiu also discusses a factory in
southern China that has implemented a jiqunwang, or Concentrated Collective Network,
as an intra-organizational system in which employers supply various types of mobile
phones to employees who are distributed throughout the factory hierarchy. Employers
pay part of the managers’ phone bills and then demand that they leave their phones on
continuously, yet factory workers are prohibited from carrying their handsets onto the
factory floor.
12
In either case, the system functions as a means for managers to monitor
employees’ work and communications.
Such research is important as a counterpoint to both academic and popular
discourses that extol mobile phones and especially text messaging for their liberatory
potential, particularly in the lives of youth around the globe (a point Qiu makes).
However, it provides a structural analysis and a traditional view of power that is top-
down and authoritarian. The jiqunwang that Qiu describes is instituted by the upper
echelon of the factory and reinforces his point that mobile technologies potentially
allow those in power a new form of control: a “wireless leash.” While not discounting
the serious consequences of such forms of mobile-enabled manipulation nor denying
how power operates vertically and is exerted over the subordinated, here I wish to draw
attention to the more mundane, yet no less significant ways that cell phones are
implicated in issues of power and surveillance, as well as everyday modes of resistance.

258
Foucault, Gender, and Resistance
As elaborated in chapter three, Foucault insists that to fully understand the
workings of power, power itself must be theorized outside of traditional notions that
view it solely as authoritarian, or as emanating from legal mandates, or only as
something repressive.
13
To Foucault, power is always involved in and located within a
fluid field of relations between individuals, “partners,” who are not necessarily equal
but who seek to act on one another, or to act “upon their actions … on possible or actual
future or present actions.”
14
Thus, power is a dynamic relationship that entails the
mutually constitutive actions of individuals (or groups) who try to influence or manage
one another’s possible actions in an unfixed and changeable relationship.
15

Also as mentioned in chapter three, one manifestation of power is what Foucault
calls “docile bodies,” which are produced through various disciplinary practices not
only in institutions, but also in an array of social relations. Docile bodies are not a result
of force but of our own compliance and internalization of certain norms and behaviors.
Furthermore, as Sandra Bartky and Susan Bordo have argued, throughout history the
female body has been the site for particular configurations of power as a result of
different social values accorded to male and female bodies. While Bartky and Bordo
focus on norms of female beauty and appearance, transnational feminist scholar
Chandra Mohanty argues that in much of the developing world the logic of the global
economy depends on an image of a “marginalized woman worker” and a notion of
“women’s work” that naturalizes certain hierarchies and ideologically constructs low-
skilled, low-wage jobs “in terms of notions of appropriate femininity, domesticity,
(hetero)sexuality, and racial and cultural stereotypes”
16

259
Surely the docile body of the migrant woman and her positionality as a rural,
unskilled, female laborer is vital to the Chinese state’s smooth operations within global
capitalism. As mentioned earlier, in China patriarchal norms still persist in many
segments of the labor market, particularly in the unquestioned expectation that rural
women should be docile, passive workers who are content to replace submission to a
male familial hierarchy with similar respect and obedience to a labor boss (male or
female). Thus, Mohanty adds, “It is especially on the bodies and lives of women and
girls from the Third World/South – the Two-Thirds World – that global capitalism
writes its script, and it is by paying attention to and theorizing the experiences of these
communities of women and girls that we demystify capitalism as a system of
debilitating sexism and racism and envision anticapitalist resistance.”
17

While Mohanty is primarily concerned with anti-globalization struggles and other
collective actions of resistance, as I stated earlier, in this chapter I focus on the
everyday, often individual modes of resistance that are produced and enabled by the
very fluidity of power relations upon which Foucault insists. As one of his most famous
quotes goes, “Where there is power, there is resistance,” and further, “These points of
resistance are present everywhere in the power network.”
18
To Foucault, power
relationships – as opposed to complete domination – imply that the one over whom
power is exercised must be a subject who is free to act (as opposed to a slave), and such
action can take the form of a variety of behaviors, responses, and outcomes.
19
He
asserts, “At the very heart of the power relationship, and constantly provoking it, are the
recalcitrance of the will and the intransigence of freedom.”
20
One must therefore begin
an analysis of power relations by attending to strategies of resistance that arise within

260
and against these very forms of power. Such strategies are multiple, contingent, and
often contradictory.
Foucault’s insistence on strategies of resistance can be linked to similar ideas
found in the work of Michel de Certeau, who also sought to show how particular
configurations of power enable certain oppositional reactions. However, in a reversal of
terminology, de Certeau distinguishes between strategies and tactics. The former is a
calculated manipulation of a power relationship by those in a dominant position. It is
undertaken in order to delimit a place that allows one to better manage exterior targets
and threats by an other.
21
Tactics, on the other hand, are used by the marginalized or
those without their own space to resist these very strategies. As de Certeau states, a
tactic “operates in isolated actions” by taking “advantage of ‘opportunities.’”
22

Furthermore, those who use tactics must “vigilantly make use of the cracks that
particular conjunctions open in the surveillance of the proprietary powers.”
23
De
Certeau shows how historically those in subordinate positions have inverted intended
purposes of laws, practices, and representations imposed on them by those in authority
in order to exert their autonomy and create their own identity.
When Foucault and de Certeau’s ideas regarding power, resistance, tactics, and
surveillance are joined with an analysis of gender, class, and place, they create a useful
framework for analyzing how mobile phones are used by migrant women as tools both
to resist and conform to a “subjected, used, transformed, improved” and gendered
docile body in the workplace. They also provide a means for understanding how
migrant women’s resistance engenders new forms of control and how institutionalized
norms and discourses produce the conditions for employer surveillance of migrant

261
women via cell phones. Before turning to my own findings in this regard, in the next
section I first highlight two ethnographic studies of female migrant workers in southern
China in order to situate my analysis.

Workplace Control, Resistance, and Compliance
Like the Chinese government, which has invested tremendous energy toward
regulating the minds and bodies of migrant workers in the form of propaganda
campaigns aimed at making them more “cultured,” hygiene and family planning
endeavors, vocational training programs, and, most importantly, the hukou system,
employers similarly devote time and effort to molding migrant workers into docile
bodies. Of course, urban residents must also contend with workplace disciplines and
with numerous media campaigns promoting a harmonious, “civilized” society,
especially in Beijing as the 2008 Summer Olympics approach.
24
However, as an
extremely marginalized population, migrant workers are even more likely to face
employers’ attempts to exercise various forms of physical and mental control over
them. As exemplified in the quote at the beginning of this chapter, some employers
operate as if they own their workers, attempting to strip them of any individual agency
and exerting an inordinate amount of influence over their lives. Migrant women, due to
their particular location in patriarchal capitalist labor relations, are seen as consenting
targets of such forms of control, since their bodies, even more so than what Sandra
Bartky argues about female bodies in general, are discursively produced as “more
docile than the bodies of men.”
25

262
For this reason, control and manipulation by bosses over their workers has been a
prominent feature in ethnographic accounts of migrant women in China. For example,
in her research on a Chinese audio equipment factory, Ching Kwan Lee describes a
“localistic, despotic factory regime” with a highly gendered organizational chain of
command, where male managers exercise patriarchal control over their female
employees through a variety of means.
26
For example, managers used extremely sexist
language with the women, often implying that they were merely passing time as they
waited to be married off. They also directly and indirectly indicated to the female
workers that they were ignorant, immature, and unreliable.
27

Similarly, Pun Ngai’s portrayal of management’s disciplinary regime over the
bodies of female workers is a virtual rewriting of Foucault’s “Docile Bodies” in
Discipline and Punish, albeit set in a Chinese electronics factory.
28
Just as Foucault
described what he called a new means of “disciplinary control” through regulations of
time, space, gestures, and “each of the relations that the body must have with the object
that it manipulates,”
29
as well as the self-surveillance imposed by the Panopticon, so
too Pun describes how the women are taught to move in a mechanized manner, how
they are positioned spatially on the line, how they follow a rigid timetable, and how
they are subjected to the Panoptic “electronic eye.”
30
Like Lee, Pun notes that managers
often chose words that denigrated the female identity of the women. They also belittled
their rural identity as well, derisively calling them “village girls” with “rough hands,
rough feet” or admonishing them to be careful since they weren’t “plowing a furrow.”
31

Such language was used not only to discipline the women, but also to mold them into

263
docile workers rather than “backward” peasants and to inscribe a feminine, subordinate
identity on them.
Though perhaps not as rigidly controlled as the workers described by Pun and
Lee, all of the women in my study – whatever their occupation – had nonetheless
undergone (and continued to undergo) numerous types of training and were subjected to
various disciplines, or “systems of micro-power that are essentially non-egalitarian and
asymmetrical,” to ensure that they were docile, compliant bodies in the workplace.
32

However, the degree of control, the amount of what I call “regulated drudgery,” and the
extent of an inspecting and internalized gaze meant to enforce gendered disciplinary
practices varied significantly by job and specific location. For example, at some
restaurants and hair salons a common practice by management is to line up all of the
employees on the sidewalk in pseudo-military formation and give them a “pep talk”
before the beginning of business hours. Such talks can range from encouraging workers
to do their best, to berating employees who might have committed some sort of mistake
during the prior work shift. The public nature of such talks is clearly meant as a
disciplining technique to produce a “practiced and subjected” worker; it also has a
performative effect in that through repetition, a well-disciplined, competent, hard-
working staff is constituted and made visible to potential customers.

Socio-techno Resistance
In the following discussion of the types of power relations in which migrant
women were involved and how mobile phones were used to resist or sustain such
relations, as mentioned earlier a key point of my argument is that specific occupations

264
and workplace environments are constitutive of particular power relations and practices,
and that overtly gendered discourses and hierarchies are central to all of these. Thus, a
woman’s positionality – which encompasses not only her place in the broader structures
of Chinese urban society but also her location in a particular labor site – is the necessary
starting point for understanding the networks of power, disciplines, and tactics to which
her mobile phone use is articulated. Also, although discrimination based on class and
geographical origin informed the labor experience of the migrant women in my study,
like Pun I believe that these identities were secondary to their identity as “female.”
While I also agree with her that in the migrant women’s workplaces gender “became a
means of discipline and self-discipline, invoked so that they would learn to police
themselves,”
33
I seek to show how mobile phones could, in some cases, be used to
disrupt these very disciplines.
Restaurants
In general, the work environment of many restaurants in Beijing is rather
regimented, and various rules and policies enable employers to have considerable
control over their workers. For example, employees (male and female) frequently have
to attend mandatory training or “teamwork” sessions in the afternoon between shifts.
Trainings are designed to teach employees proper techniques for waiting on customers,
including posture, language, and mannerisms. Teamwork sessions (not to be confused
with the “pep talks” mentioned earlier) aim to build camaraderie among employees and
loyalty to the restaurant. At their core, all of these activities are meant to ensure that
rural “peasants” are transformed into docile bodies in the workplace.

265
Another disciplinary technique is the requirement that new employees give
employers a deposit (yajin, usually 100 to 500 yuan, about $13.00 to $65.00, depending
on the size of the restaurant) out of their first paycheck. If an employee wants to quit
their job and receive this deposit back, they must first receive a good evaluation
(pizhun) from their boss. Of course, such evaluations are usually arbitrary and the whole
system allows employers to keep all or most of an employee’s deposit when he or she
leaves a job. Several women also told me their bosses had demanded their identity cards
(shenfenzhen). This practice, which is technically illegal, leaves workers extremely
vulnerable to the whims of their employers.
Like the hair salons discussed in chapter three, most restaurants also maintain
employee distinctions and hierarchies based on sex, with specific jobs allocated to men
and other jobs designated for women. Just as in the hair salons, both overt policies and
unspoken assumptions serve to uphold “appropriate” norms of masculinity and
femininity in the workplace. Traditionally in China, women in the household were
responsible for cooking; however, in public eating establishments women could only
make “flour” items like noodles or dumplings while males prepared dishes of meat and
vegetables (e.g. the “real” food). In Beijing, this custom still persists in many
restaurants, meaning that men prepare the food and women serve it. Though males can
also be servers, women make up the majority. This practice is not far removed from the
western construction of a chef as a subject position that is traditionally gendered male.
It also brings to mind Susan Bordo’s work on gender differences regarding hunger and
food. As she persuasively argues, in much western advertising discourse, “men eat and
women prepare,” a dualism that positions women – frequently constructed as maternal

266
figures – as always nurturing, self-sacrificing, and content to “receive their gratification
through nourishing others,” usually men and children (emphasis in original).
34
Men, on
the other hand, are the object of women’s love, via their stomach, and are encouraged to
relish not only such love but also the food that comes with it.
Though in the contemporary Chinese restaurant context, the dualism must be
rephrased as “men prepare, women serve,” the gender asymmetries are no less
significant. In China, traditionally any type of service work has been seen as
demeaning, and this is no less true of waiting tables, which is devalued as an unskilled
occupation most appropriate for women. A woman from the countryside who is a
waitress thus faces triple marginalization due to her gender, her rural background, and
her occupation. These gender-, place-, and class-based employment inequalities are then
reproduced in the restaurant environment.
In all but the smallest restaurants, it is customary to have two young attractive
women stand at the door to greet customers as they enter. This job is rarely held by
males. More so than their male counterparts, in most restaurants women must adhere to
strict regulations regarding their appearance and decorum. Their uniforms usually
consist of sheer blouses and short skirts or a qipao (a traditional Chinese dress, very
form-fitting with a slit skirt and a mandarin collar), and they are expected to be young
and good looking. Certain establishments even maintain height and weight standards,
which exist especially to please male customers. As discussed earlier, in China,
marketization has created a male business culture where deals are made and favors
exchanged through banqueting at restaurants that involves large amounts of food and
alcohol and frequenting karaoke bars (where hostesses are often also prostitutes).
35
In

267
this domain, women as business partners are rare, but female service staff occupy a
position that is at once subservient yet crucial: their presence enables the smooth
functioning of social relations that then leads to promises being made and deals being
sealed. A young, attractive, attentive female waitress is an integral link in the masculine
chain of talk, toasts, and transactions.
36
This type of gendered restaurant culture is
pervasive regardless of whether a dining establishment is considered common or
extravagant or whether the customers are male or female.
Though all employees are required to be submissive to bosses and to meet the
demands of even the most particular of customers, females are expected to be especially
demure in their interactions with patrons, even when these patrons are rude and when
such interaction might cause a woman extreme discomfort. In an interview with Ji Hua,
a woman who worked at a restaurant that I visited many times, she once told me,
“When the male patrons are drinking they tell a lot of dirty stories and say a lot of bad
words. I hate to listen to it, but there is nothing I can do since I have to stand nearby to
wait on them.”
37
Surely the male customers Ji Hua speaks of are aware that their
language and behavior might embarrass her, but since they regard her as merely a
dagongmei, her inferior status gives them license to behave in ways that would not be
sanctioned were they in their own home with their own wife or daughter. In various
restaurants I often saw customers hail their servers in a very gruff manner or scold them
if they didn’t bring out a dish quickly enough; in essence, they treated them (male and
female) like servants. An exception to this was in a small restaurant that was part of an
inn owned by the Women’s Federation. Here the employees tended to be treated better

268
by both their employer and the guests, who were often in Beijing for business or
conferences affiliated with the Federation.
In such a restaurant atmosphere based on subservience and control, employers see
mobile phones as a threat to their authority; thus, in many restaurants employees are
banned from bringing their phones to work altogether. If they are caught with a phone,
it is confiscated and returned either at the end of the work day or in some cases a week
later, and usually their pay is docked. I should point out that this happens not if an
employee is caught using a phone but merely if they are discovered with one in their
possession at work. Employers, then, seek not only to mold workers’ bodies – their
posture, motility, and speech – but also to regulate what is carried on their bodies. Such
control over mobile phones is akin to schools where mobile phones are banned since
they are seen as potentially disruptive and also as threats to teachers’ authority.
38
The
difference, of course, is that the migrant workers in these restaurants are adults, yet the
environment is built according to norms of patriarchal authority and control, with a boss
or manager serving as a parental figure and the employees, particularly the women,
constructed as child-like subjects.
Like their similarly-aged peers in schools around the globe, many migrant women
working in restaurants attempt to subvert such authority. In the power relations in which
their mobile phone has become entangled, they enact resistance in largely subtle ways
that aren’t always even about usage but rather about mere possession. Such “possession
as resistance” as a socio-techno practice is exemplified in the following conversation I
had with Luo Li Kun, a colleague of Ji Hua’s, about her cell phone at work:

269
CW: Do you bring your mobile phone to work despite the ban?
LLK: Yes, sometimes. I want to know if I receive a message.
CW: How do you conceal your phone from others?
LLK: Depending on which uniform I am wearing, I can put my phone in
my pocket and no one can tell it is there but me.
CW: Do you use your phone much at work?
LLK: No – once in a while, but not usually. I like to feel that I have it.
CW: Are you afraid you’ll get caught?
LLK: No, I’m not afraid, but it’s possible.
39

Through Luo Li Kun’s words, it is clear that the mere fact of carrying a mobile
phone – a very personal item – is an act of resistance against arbitrary rules and power
relations that operate to regulate her behavior and strip her of her right even to decide
what she brings or does not bring to work. To her, just to feel her mobile phone against
her body holds symbolic meaning. In de Certeau’s terms, this is a tactic exercised by
someone clearly in the margins to contend with the strategies of the powerful. But such
tactics are not without their risks. If Luo Li Kun’s employer were to catch her with her
phone, she would have to pay 50 yuan (about $6.50, one twelfth of her monthly
income). Considering that all of her friends aside from her boyfriend are still in her
hometown and her mobile phone is her primary means of keeping in touch with them,
the possibility of having it confiscated for up to a week is a risk that surpasses even the
potential financial consequences.
I met other women who engaged in similar symbolic protests against authoritarian
bosses. Some women were bolder than Luo Li Kun, and they made it clear that carrying
their phone was meant to be an act of defiance. For example, Tan Fenfang had been a
waitress at several different venues in Beijing. She was currently a cashier at a
restaurant and took advantage of her fixed position and the large counter where she was

270
stationed to use her mobile phone to text message off and on throughout her shift. She
had once been fined by her employer for using her phone, but her phone had not been
taken, and this punishment had not deterred her. She explained her phone usage at work
to me in this way: “These bosses can’t control everything.”
40
Unlike Luo Li Kun and
Tan Fenfang, others have internalized the boss’ gaze and are scared to use their phone
even when unsupervised, lest they get caught, their phone confiscated, and their pay
reduced. Quite frequently, however, when they are brought to work at the restaurants –
whether they are used or not – cell phones are a tool deployed by migrant women in
tactical maneuvers of resistance to modes of control informed primarily by gender- but
also class- and place-based inequalities.
Marketplaces
As with the hair salons mentioned in chapter three and the restaurants described
above, gendered power relations and divisions of labor are quite apparent in both small
shops and large marketplaces in Beijing, where most of the employees are migrants, and
the majority of them are young women. Young and middle-aged men work in the
marketplaces as well, but in most cases they are clearly a minority and occupy a
different status than the women. The older men are generally running their own
business. The younger men are usually the son or son-in-law of the owner of the stall
where they work, and their job is not only to sell products but also to keep an eye on
employees. The women with whom they work often address these young men using
fictive kin terms such as “older brother” (dage) thereby situating their unequal power
relations within a traditional, patriarchal family ideology.
41

271
Working as a vendor is considered an unskilled occupation and as such thought to
be suitable for migrant women, but I was also told by several people that since women
are more interested in fashion, they are “naturally” better at selling clothes. There is also
a belief that if a vendor is young and cute, customers are more likely to purchase
something from her. This is seen as especially important since, unlike in the department
stores and shopping malls, bargaining is de rigueur in many small shops and all of the
marketplaces. Of course, this logic should apply in the case of young male vendors
negotiating with female customers, but essentialized notions of gender in China map
different sales strategies onto male and female bodies. The former should use their
apparently innate masculine skills of logic, rationality, and (with electronics), technical
expertise to make a sale while the latter are expected to employ feminine charm,
persuasion, and feelings to compel customers to purchase goods. In the large
marketplaces that have an entire floor (or two) devoted to selling as well as making
jewelry, the “myth of nimble fingers” is also evident.
42
The workers who spend 10
hours a day piecing together necklaces, bracelets, and earrings of pearls and other semi-
precious stones are overwhelmingly female.
As mentioned in chapter one, I spent a lot of time in two small shops and three
large marketplaces. The atmosphere of the small shops contrasted greatly with the large
marketplaces in job requirements and employee-employer relationships. The two small
shops differed from one another as well in terms of the control of employees by
employers. In one shop, the owner was rarely present, and the young woman who
worked there everyday had a fairly large degree of autonomy regarding how she spent
her time. When there were no customers and she did not have any tasks to do, she could

272
read magazines or use her cell phone. At the other small shop the situation was quite
different. In the mornings, the young migrant woman employed there was on her own
and frequently sent text messages to a few friends as she went about helping customers
and managing the shop. However, everyday once the owner arrived in the early
afternoon, she kept this employee busy with endless tasks and forbade her to use her
phone even when there were no customers and no jobs to be done.
The marketplaces are more regimented compared to the small shops, and
depending on the market and even the particular stall, employees can be required to
stand for hours on end, to maintain an erect posture (crossing arms is forbidden), and to
try to attract customers by saying the “right” words. This means the women are not
supposed to wait for someone to approach and express interest in their goods. Instead,
they must call out incessantly to passersby (e.g., “Do you want to buy a bag? What kind
of bag? I have Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Coach…”) in the hope that someone will stop and
they can then engage them in a bargaining session. Bosses often stand to the side or, as
noted above, employ a male relative to make sure that employees adhere to this
exhausting, disciplinary regime. As one woman, Huang Hui An, remarked, “We do all
the work; the boss just hangs around reading the newspaper and drinking tea, watching
to make sure we haggle with customers and don't steal any money.”
43

The marketplaces all have different rules regarding how their workers can spend
their time during slow periods. Some allow employees to read, knit, or use their mobile
phones when there are no customers present. Others permit reading but ban mobile
phones outright. However, these prohibitions affect men and women at the markets
differently. The “older brothers” mentioned earlier usually pay no heed to these rules. It

273
is commonly acknowledged that as a son or relative of the boss, they have privileges
denied to mere workers. Like their peers in the hair salons, they also always have state
of the art mobile phones: Nokia or Motorola, with camera functions, music and video
players, and Internet connections. Many were quite eager to show me their phones, the
games they played, the websites they surfed, and so on. The migrant women who work
at the marketplaces, on the other hand, usually have inexpensive, Chinese-brand phones
with voice and text functions and sometimes a camera.
Though the women I knew at the markets tended not to be as brash as the young
men in their resistance to the rules regarding mobile phone use, in the most regimented
market atmosphere, where they can be under nearly constant surveillance, it is no
wonder that a mobile phone becomes a small tool of resistance to reclaim space and
time. Following Foucault, Doreen Massey reminds us that because the “geometry of
social/power relations” is always shifting, structures of dominance are also never
completely fixed.
44
Thus, I often witnessed that when a boss was momentarily away or
preoccupied, one of the first things many women did was check their phones. As Huang
Hui An told me, “I can’t use my phone when my boss is around, even when there are no
customers, but when he’s not looking I still will send or read messages.”
45

James Katz has called attention to the way the public use of mobile phones is a
type of “dance” in which all involved “must engage in a bit of choreography” in order
to be “in sync.”
46
By this Katz means that the mobile phone user, his or her co-present
interlocutor prior to the incoming call, or strangers within earshot all must undertake a
great deal of “tacit … but indirect coordination” to navigate public space together.
47

While this type of choreography certainly takes place in China as elsewhere, in the

274
marketplaces I often observed the opposite as well – the mobile phone used as a direct
means of remaining “out of sync” with those nearby. Cell phones, particularly those
equipped with games or music, can become a means for migrant women to ignore
customers who do not appear likely to buy something. As mentioned earlier, employees
in the marketplaces are supposed to be more than attentive to customers – they are
pressured by employers to practically harass passersby in order to strike up a round of
bargaining. Equipped with a mobile phone, however, some migrant women actively
resist such job requirements. In so doing, they not only refuse standards of social
etiquette, but also gender norms that cast them as passive, compliant female bodies. In a
similar manner, mobile phones are also used to block out the unwanted banter of other
colleagues. Among individual users, or shared among two or three people, a mobile
phone can clearly be used as socio-techno means of exclusion and erecting barriers. But
beyond staking out terrain and reclaiming space, in the marketplaces the mobile is used
by migrant women (and men) for the most mundane of reasons – to relieve the sheer
boredom of standing day in and day out in the same cramped stall doing the same
repetitive job.
In the studies by Lee and Pun cited earlier, both noted the tactics used by the
women in the factories to assert some control over their situation. Lee noticed that
sometimes the women would ignore managers’ demands to work harder or faster, and
they also seemed to delight in reappropriating the gendered language the managers used
to control or denigrate them. Pun observed that the female workers occasionally slowed
down the production line during a rush order when they felt over-worked and frequently
listened to a radio playing pop music in defiance of company rules. Though these are

275
small and perhaps inconsequential forms of resistance, both Lee and Pun insist that the
women were not just victims of patriarchal management control but were “tactical
agents in negotiating their own lives and in manipulating those exploitative forces for
their own ends in their daily struggles.”
48

Whether in a restaurant or a market, clearly mobile phones do not break down the
regimens of disciplinary control and power that circulate in and through migrant
women’s lives, and they may work even to maintain these. However, because of the
very fluid nature of such power, cell phones do become tools for migrant women to
engage in their own tactics for exercising individual agency – just like the women in
Lee and Pun’s studies – no matter how constrained. If she desires, a young migrant
woman can exert a mini-rebellion via her mobile phone on several fronts – against a
rigid and arbitrary rule, against a present but unwanted customer, against her boss who
is relying on her labor for his or her own gain, and at a more existential level, against
the material conditions of her life. While mobile phone uses as well as discourses can
help sustain asymmetrical gender relations, they can also enable modes of
empowerment that reconfigure these very relationships, even if only temporarily. They
therefore are implements for de Certeau’s tactics – those methods that “use, manipulate,
and divert” the spaces produced by the strategies of those in authority.
49
However, just
as strategies inspire tactics, tactics also inspire new strategies by those seeking to
maintain and exploit their dominant position within networks of power. It is to such
strategies that I now turn.

276
Mobile Phones and Surveillance

Many scholars have drawn attention to the way that mobile phones can be used for
new modes of surveillance and for further normalizing mechanisms of state monitoring
and organizational control, as in the examples by Jia and Weber as well as Qiu
highlighted earlier. In the labor sphere, aside from intra-organizational systems such as
the jiqunwang described by Qiu, there has also been research on white collar “mobile
workers” whose cell phones allow management greater ability to supervise their
productivity away from the office and makes them potentially available outside of
regular work hours, whether they want to be or not.
50
In other realms such as family and
school, wireless phones can also serve a surveillance function. As Nicola Green has
shown in her study of the role of cell phones in school, parental, and peer monitoring of
teenagers in England, mobile phones allow “tele-present monitoring of others” in
micro-level social relationships based on “mutual trust and accountability.”
51
Similar
types of “tele-present monitoring” have been documented in mobile phone studies
conducted in a number of countries including Japan and Norway.
52

While the studies done on mobile workers, school, and family relationships tend
to contextualize such surveillance within norms of reciprocal trust and mutual
responsibility, of course cell phones have also been implicated in more malicious forms
of surveillance, such as unauthorized taking and/or distributing of pictures or video of
ostensibly private acts (e.g., Paris Hilton’s infamous cell phone sex video) or intentional
filming and disseminating of criminal behavior for a perverse grab at fame, such as in
the case of the “happy slappers” in England.

277
In focusing on cell phones and surveillance specifically related to work, aside
from the institutionalized modes of technological monitoring, where a highly organized
central authority (the corporation) exerts control over those who are subordinate (the
workers), and white collar workers whose mobile phone is one more device in their
wired, mobile lifestyle, an important issue is how economically and socially
marginalized populations become targets of employer surveillance in more incidental,
mundane ways. In the case of migrant workers owning mobile phones, employers now
have a means of keeping tabs on employees that they never had before given that most
migrant workers do not have landlines. Furthermore, unlike parental monitoring or
some monitoring of mobile workers, individual surveillance of migrant women by their
employers does not necessarily take place within relations of mutual trust and
accountability. Instead, what often becomes apparent is a lack of trust.
In what follows I discuss three forms of employer cell phone surveillance, each
with its own peculiarities and circumstances, enacted upon four migrant women. In the
previous discussion of mobile phones and resistance in the workplace I sought to
emphasize that particular occupational structures and locations enable or constrain
specific forms of resistance. However, in the following discussion I shift the focus and
argue instead that the overall power relations in which female migrants and their
employers are situated give rise to modes of employer surveillance that are not
dependent on a particular location. Rather, traditional authoritarian managerial styles,
patriarchal modes of familial organization, and deeply engrained cultural prejudices
against rural women create a socio-cultural assemblage in which the mobile phone (or

278
the prohibition of mobile phone ownership) is smoothly integrated into practices of
surveillance and control.
The Boutique Assistant
Wu Daiyu worked as an assistant in a boutique that largely catered to a foreign
clientele and was owned by a Beijing woman in her mid-30s who went by the name of
Linda. The boutique was tiny, with two racks of clothing occupying the center, and the
two side walls lined with rows of jackets, shirts, and skirts. Two narrow aisles on either
side of the center rack cut paths to the back of the shop where there was a small
changing room and mirror. Just to the right of the entrance at the front of the shop was a
small counter with a cash register. This was where Linda usually sat when she was at
the store, reviewing and placing orders or practicing her Japanese or English language
skills with customers.
Wu Daiyu was 20 years old and from a small village in Hebei province
neighboring Beijing. In many ways, Wu Daiyu’s life was similar to other women I met.
Both of her parents were farmers and she grew up extremely poor, the oldest of four
children. When she was a teenager, her father had invested in a local enterprise, but
when a business partner ran off with all of the money he was left with nothing. After
this event, Wu Daiyu dropped out of middle school and worked in a local factory to help
support her family. She repeatedly told me how dumb (hen ben) she was and how she
lacked knowledge (meiyou wenhua). When I met her, she had been at the boutique for
about a year. She worked everyday without a day off, earning 1,000 yuan per month
(about $130), half of which she sent home to her family. She lived in a single room with

279
no heat on the outskirts of Beijing and commuted by bus about an hour each way to and
from her job.
Wu Daiyu bought her first mobile phone a month after she arrived in Beijing with
the money she had saved from her factory job (she had given the rest of her salary to her
parents). This was our conversation about the role of the mobile phone in her life:
CW: When you first bought a mobile phone, what kind was it?
WDY: It was a Chinese-made clamshell phone with a music player.
CW: How much did it cost?
WDY: About 800 yuan [about $104]. I bought it because I really like to
listen to music.
CW: Is it the same phone you have now?
WDY: No, it was stolen one month after I bought it. I cried the whole day
after that happened. I even dreamed about it. It was in my dreams a few
times. I could see it.
CW: You must have been really upset.
WDY: Yeah. I was so sad.
CW: When did you get your current phone?
WDY: I saved up my money and bought another one a few months later,
but it was cheaper, about 600 yuan [about $78], and it doesn’t have a
music player, which is a pity.
CW: Why didn’t you buy one with a music player?
WDY: Because I was eager to buy a new phone. When I had a mobile
phone I called my family once a week, but without a phone that was really
hard to do with my work schedule. So I just bought a cheap one. Now I
even call them twice a week [her family got a landline in 1999].
53

I quote at length from my interview with Wu Daiyu for a number of reasons. Her
story reinforces several points I have made in previous chapters – the sacrifice that goes
into purchasing a phone, its significance for maintaining links with others, its role as an
entertainment device for women who usually do not own a radio or television set, and
the devastation that is felt when a phone is stolen (which frequently happens in Beijing).
Wu Daiyu’s mobile phone was a medium for communication, a symbol of her ability to
manage her own resources and still display her affection and filial duty to her family,

280
and a device that allowed her to escape into the music that she loved. However, after she
gave her mobile number to Linda, her employer, the phone took on a new role that she
had never anticipated: it became something that brought her a lot of anguish. I
discovered this one day when I dropped in to the boutique and noticed that Wu Daiyu
looked very distraught. I asked her what was wrong and she said that in the last month
Linda had been calling her on her mobile phone late at night to accuse her of stealing
clothing from the shop. As Wu Daiyu explained:
Last week at about 10:00pm I was just getting home. My mobile phone
rang and it was Linda. She said she couldn’t find some blouses that had
just arrived and she accused me of taking them. I told her they were in the
back of the shop, but she wouldn’t listen to me. I was so upset. I told her I
would go back to the shop and show her, to prove my innocence. The
buses had stopped running so I was preparing to take a taxi. I was out on
the street crying because I felt so bad that she would treat me that way and
because I could not afford a cab.
54
Just as I was about to flag one down
Linda called me again and said she had found the clothing. It was where I
had said it was. Then she apologized.
55

Wu Daiyu was visibly distressed when she told me this story, and she said it was not the
only time Linda had called her on her cell phone to level such accusations. However,
each time Linda accused Wu Daiyu of theft, in the end it turned out that Linda either
had misplaced something or had not bothered to look where Wu Daiyu suggested she
look for whatever it was that was missing. Wu Daiyu said she desperately wanted to
quit her job but was concerned that time spent looking for a new job was money she
couldn’t afford to lose. “It’s really hard to take,” she repeated to me. “I really can’t take
it.”
The example of Linda and Wu Daiyu illustrates how mobile phones can be used to
reinforce existing power relations and how they actually create new opportunities for

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the subordinated to be further manipulated by those in authority. Unlike the “mobile
workers” whose cell phone is often supplied and paid for by their employers, Wu
Daiyu’s personal phone, for which she sacrificed and shed tears, was usurped by Linda
as a tool of manipulation and control in a very mundane, yet sinister manner.
Furthermore, Linda’s “cellular harassment” is not contingent on Wu Daiyu’s location in
a specific occupation – as a waitress or vendor. Rather, it is specific to the social
construction of Wu Daiyu as a migrant worker, a subject position that is rendered
subordinate, devalued, and dehumanized, and even more so when the signifier “female”
is attached to it. In fact, given China’s gender norms it is difficult to imagine Linda
treating a male migrant worker in this particular manner. Linda’s access to Wu Daiyu’s
cell phone was clearly an attempt to curb Wu Daiyu’s sense of autonomy vis-à-vis her
job and to remind her of her identity as a dagongmei. Mobile phones, then, are not
always liberatory. Like other technologies, they can support asymmetrical power
relationships, create new modes of exploitation and control, and supplant what should
be relations of trust with suspicion and apprehension.
Still, “where there is power, there is resistance.” Wu Daiyu eventually devised her
own tactics to overcome Linda’s strategies. Before leaving the shop each night, she
reminded Linda where any new items were placed and checked to make sure everything
was okay. If Linda was gone, Wu Daiyu performed this ritual via text message. This
seemed to at least temporarily defuse Linda’s behavior. The last time I saw Wu Daiyu
she had actually moved into the tiny partition in the back of the store. While this
maneuver could certainly be called a weak form of resistance or not resistance at all
since it clearly resulted in a loss of some of her autonomy, I still believe it was a tactical

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decision. It saved her rent money, a long bus commute, and the possibility of being
accused of stealing, for there was no place for her to hide anything she could have
possibly stolen (!).
The Maintenance Worker
The next example of cell phones and employer surveillance differs from Wu
Daiyu’s case in that overt manipulation was not involved, yet it demonstrates how a
mobile phone is easily co-opted for purposes that differ from its owner’s original
intentions. Zhuang Jie had been in Beijing for about four years. During this time she had
worked very hard to “develop herself,” attending computer training courses at a branch
of the Beijing library, enrolling in English language classes, and finally entering night
school at a university to receive the equivalent of a vocational degree. When I met her
she was employed as the head of one section of the maintenance staff in a mid-sized
company in Beijing. The staff she oversaw consisted of 17 young women who were
responsible for cleaning and maintaining the company’s offices, meeting rooms, and
restrooms. In addition to supervising their work, Zhuang Jie had to ensure that these
women, with whom she shared a dormitory, were in bed by their 10:00pm curfew and
up and at work every morning by 8:00am. She also handled orders and deliveries of
cleaning supplies and signed off on timesheets. Thus, her job required a fair amount of
responsibility and managerial skills.
Zhuang Jie had a very basic mobile phone that she had purchased three years
earlier. It could handle voice calls and texting but did not have a camera or other
functions. She originally bought it to keep in touch with her family back in the
countryside as well as former colleagues from previous jobs in Beijing. Like most

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women I knew, she spent about 50 yuan (about $6.50) per month on pre-paid phone
cards. From our interview sessions and her mobile phone diaries, however, it became
clear that her mobile phone frequently served other purposes than the social reasons for
which she had originally purchased it. In four days of mobile phone logs she recorded
40 uses of her mobile phone, for an average of about 10 uses per day, most of which
were text messages. However, Zhuang Jie acknowledged that sometimes she was so
busy when she received a call or text at work that she hadn’t always had time to log the
communication. It is therefore reasonable to assume she actually used her phone more
than what the mobile phone diaries showed.
Out of all of her communication recorded over this four day period, only about
one quarter was for communication with friends or family – calls to and from her
mother, brother, grandfather, grandmother, and aunt, three text messages from a friend,
and one phone call from another friend. The rest consisted of text messages and phone
calls from supervisors or colleagues. The women she supervised sent her messages or
called her to ask questions or relay information such as the following:
1) When will we receive our summer uniforms?
2) Where is the key to the to stockroom?
3) Can you help me get more pay?
4) I’m going to be late.

Supervisors called or sent messages such as:
1) Go meet the delivery truck at the gate.
2) Please change Xiao Sun’s position. She is not doing a good job.
3) You need to get your team members’ employee numbers for their
insurance forms.

In all cases, Zhuang Jie had to respond to these calls and messages as part of her job. If
she was away from her office or if the office phone wasn’t working (which seemed to

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occur frequently), she was obligated to use her mobile. Though she could receive calls
for no charge, she had to pay to make phone calls. She also had to pay for text
messages, which while inexpensive could still generate a high cost due to sheer volume.
It is important to stress that Zhuang Jie should not be considered a “mobile
worker” – she is employed within a small compound and moves about between two or
three buildings, and she does not have the education, skills, and job tasks typically
associated with mobile or “telework.” Furthermore, like Wu Daiyu, her cell phone is not
supplied by her employer nor does her employer pay for any part of her phone usage.
However, her particular relationship to her employer requires that because she has a
mobile phone, she must allow her superiors to supervise her and make demands of her
via her phone. In the same way, Zhuang Jie’s relationship to her colleagues – to whom
she is a supervisor but also a peer – creates the conditions whereby they can monopolize
her time and monitor her via her mobile phone. Zhuang Jie uses her phone in this
manner with those she supervises as well. In her mobile phone diaries she logged
several instances where she initiated a work-related text message exchange with certain
women in her charge. For example, she sent a message to a woman who was not in the
dormitory by 10:00pm one night. She also does not allow cell phones to be used in the
dorm past the 10:00pm, lights out curfew.
Zhuang Jie’s relationships to her superiors and subordinates as these are mediated
through her cell phone thus bring to mind Qiu’s “wireless leash.” The networks of
power relations in which Zhuang Jie is situated in her workplace mean that a cell phone
might decrease her autonomy even as it increases her efficiency. Still, it is important to
point out that while her mobile phone is implicated in her identity as a subordinate

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worker, it also is an important part of her identity as a low-level supervisor, a position
she was very proud to have obtained. Nonetheless, as much as Zhuang Jie said she
valued her phone because it enabled her to stay in touch with friends and family, she
was the only woman with whom I spoke who said she would be relieved – it would
“save her some worry” (bijiao shengxin) – if she didn’t have a phone since at work it
had become a means for colleagues and bosses to constantly page her. However, she
could not get rid of her phone even if she wanted to. Her colleagues enjoy her constant
availability and her employer now expects her to be always available.
“Just a Girl:” Silence as Surveillance

The last example of mobile phones and surveillance actually concerns two young
women who share similar circumstances in their mobile phone use, or rather, lack of
use. The point of these women’s stories is to illustrate that as much as a mobile phone
can be used as a medium for monitoring and control, prohibiting ownership of or
confiscating a phone can serve the same purpose. In China, as Internet and cell phone
usage have increased extremely rapidly, there has been a corresponding moral panic
regarding what are perceived to be the ill effects of these technologies. The Internet and
cell phones have been blamed for disseminating dangerous rumors, fostering unhealthy
habits like gambling, and for encouraging sexual immorality through enabling illicit
affairs and access to pornography. These concerns about the detrimental effects of new
communication technologies are not unique to China, but they have generated
considerable attention in a socio-cultural context where until quite recently mediated
information was tightly controlled and an underdeveloped telecommunications
infrastructure meant that most people’s ability to communicate privately via telephone

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was rather limited. When such fears about mobile phones are linked to patriarchal
modes of employee control, the ability of the mobile phone to subvert other modes of
surveillance is what then becomes noteworthy.
Guo Yaping was 19 and worked in her older cousin’s tiny shop in an alley in one
of the traditional neighborhoods in the center of Beijing. Guo Yaping had been in
Beijing for about a year, and she and her cousin worked at the shop everyday about 12
hours a day. She also lived with her cousin and her cousin’s husband. She said she had
no friends in Beijing, which wasn’t surprising given the extremely restricted social
world in which she lived. Although Guo Yaping’s cousin had a cell phone, she would
not allow Guo Yaping to own one. When I asked her why not she said, “She is too
young, and anyway, she is still learning [about the shop] and a mobile phone would
distract her.” She then added, “One mobile phone is enough for two people.”
56

Although Guo Yaping was an adult, in the course of our conversation her cousin
referred to her as a naïve child, and she clearly assumed a parental role in Guo Yaping’s
life even though she was probably not over 30. While Guo Yaping’s cousin could keep
an eye on her and monitor her quite easily in the small space of the shop and the home,
a mobile phone would undermine this authority and grant Guo Yaping a degree of
autonomy that her cousin was not willing to let her have. Her cousin also forbade her
from going to Internet cafés, saying they were dangerous places not appropriate for a
young woman. Though Guo Yaping said she did not really have any interest in going to
an Internet café, she confided to me that she really wanted her own mobile phone but
felt that for the time being she had to obey her cousin. Thus, once again gender and
power were intertwined in techniques of control. In constructing Guo Yaping’s identity

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as that of a “child” or a “naïve girl,” her cousin created a discursive environment that
effectively limited Guo Yaping’s possibilities for individual agency and autonomy in a
number of realms.
Li Xiulan had a situation similar to Guo Yaping’s. She was 17 and sold sports
shoes from a stall owned by her uncle in one of Beijing’s large marketplaces. She also
lived with her aunt and uncle, and when I met her she was only making 300 yuan per
month (about $39) because after six months she was still in “training.” Li Xiulan owned
a cell phone, but her aunt had taken it away from her even though she wasn’t using it at
work. Rather, her aunt had decided that she was staying up too late and sending too
many text messages. Like Guo Yaping’s cousin, Li Xiulan’s aunt had taken on the role
of a surrogate parent even though Li Xiulan was nearly an adult. Although I never met
Li Xiulan’s aunt, Li Xiulan told me that her aunt treated her quite differently from her
17-year-old male cousin (Li Xiulan’s aunt’s son). Not surprisingly, he was allowed to
have a cell phone. I asked Li Xiulan if she thought this was fair and she said, “Of course
not, but he’s her son, he’s a male. That’s the way it is.”
57

These stories are not extraordinary, but they present a contrast to much research
done in developed countries about mobile phones in parent-child relationships. In much
of the literature, while a mobile phone is found to be a device that allows teens a degree
of freedom, parents say they feel better about their children’s safety because of the cell
phone; the mobile thus provides “safe autonomy.”
58
In the stories of Guo Yaping and Li
Xiulan, however, the parental figures in their lives obviously do not see a cell phone as
something that offers safety or security. Instead, they view it as the very opposite: a
threat to the young women’s safety as well as their ability to be monitored. A mobile

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phone is feared for potentially allowing too much autonomy to young women that
gendered power relations have discursively produced as in need of protection by an
older, wiser authority figure.
Here it is important to keep in mind that these young women, and especially their
aunt and cousin, did not grow up in a “telephone culture.” They did not have landlines
in their homes when they were young, the telephone did not play a role in their social
lives, and their parents did not use a telephone to keep tabs on them. The mode of
village life, where everyone knows what everyone else is doing, made this unnecessary
even if there had been landlines. Thus, for some rural parents (or parent figures), the
thought that those in their charge – particularly when they are females – can engage in
conversations with potentially anyone via a mobile phone is not a comforting feeling.
They obviously do not see a phone as providing safe autonomy but as something
opening a doorway to conversations and content they cannot control. Rather than using
a mobile phone as a monitoring device, they choose to ban cell phones altogether as a
more expedient means of monitoring. In this way, they reify a notion of young migrant
women – dagongmei – as passive, childlike, and vulnerable.

Mobile Phones and Economic Outcomes

Although in my fieldwork I did not focus extensively on the relationship between
cell phones and economic outcomes, certainly one’s economic status and possibilities
for improvement are related to issues of identity and autonomy. Also, it seems a
discussion of mobile communications, labor, and a low-income population should
address in some manner the role of mobile phones in enhancing economic outcomes.
59

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Whether new communication technologies in general can increase the income of those
who are socially and economically marginalized has been a pressing question in the
development literature, first with the Internet and more recently with mobile phones. In
the latter case, the data have been limited but thus far have shown promising results
among certain populations in certain situations.
60
Here again, however, issues of power
cannot be ignored. Whether a migrant woman can use a cell phone to resist her marginal
status, increase her income, successfully search for employment, or improve her job
opportunities are all intricately connected to her identity as “migrant woman” and her
autonomy vis-à-vis a number of limiting circumstances related to time, space, and
institutionalized biases. These are the issues that I will explore in this last section
Does a Mobile Phone Help Increase Income?
To address whether mobile phones can help migrant women increase their income,
I begin with two vignettes:
Wang Anmei is 26 and is a small entrepreneur. She sells apples at a
migrant market in the northern part of Beijing. She and her husband have
been in Beijing for five years, and during this time they have expanded
their business from selling only in the market to delivering apples to
various restaurants and other establishments. Wang Anmei has a very
basic mobile phone, with only voice and text functions. She is a very
instrumental user of her phone. In her words, “I’m not the kind of person
who thinks a mobile phone is part of who they are, like a status symbol.
It’s just a tool.” With her phone she has been able to build up her business
connections. She insists the mobile phone has helped her increase her
income through enabling her to receive and deliver orders from customers
whenever they call her.
61

Zhao Ning is 20 and works at one of the largest and most popular
marketplaces catering to foreigners in the center of one of Beijing’s
business districts. She sells belts, wallets, and other small leather goods
from a small stall owned by a Beijing resident. She works 12 hours a day
and makes about 2,000 yuan per month (around $260), about double what

290
women in the other marketplaces make because of the prime location of
this particular market. She has a Sony Ericsson phone with a camera and a
music player. She likes to listen to music, play games, and text message
with her phone. About her work she says, “If I like my job, or don’t like
my job, it’s all the same.” When I asked her if having a phone had helped
her increase her income, she laughed and said, “No way.”
62

As these stories are meant to illustrate, whether ownership of a mobile phone can
help increase one’s income depends on several factors. Wang Anmei was one of the few
entrepreneurs that I interviewed in my study, and she was also one of the few married
women, two details that actually are connected. Many rural women who are married
decide to migrate together with their husbands. Since they usually have some savings
and can pool their resources, such couples often set up small businesses in their
destination. They are also able to multiply their networking capabilities and divide tasks
and in this way increase their business and build up their income. Taking these factors
into account should abate any sort of deterministic argument regarding mobile phones
and income generation. A mobile phone did not create the conditions for Wang Anmei
and her husband’s success. Rather, they were able to integrate the benefits of mobile
telephony into the financial, entrepreneurial, and domestic strategies they had already
established. Also, since they were autonomous owners of a small business, they could
take advantage of the mobile phone’s unique attribute – its mobility – to more
effectively conduct their business. They were not wealthy by any means, and the bulk of
their income still came from selling apples at the market. But the mobile phone allowed
them a new means of connecting with customers and increasing their productivity. In
this way, the cell phone brought them benefits similar to those experienced by micro-
entrepreneurs using mobile phones in other developing countries.

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Zhao Ning, on the other hand, was operating from a very different position
socially, occupationally, and financially. She worked in a marketplace dominated by
foreign tourists, not return customers, although some Russian and other Eastern
Europeans would often buy clothing in bulk from such markets to bring to their home
countries to sell. Unlike Wang Anmei, however, she was not running her own business
and thus was not necessarily motivated to try to build up her customer base.
Furthermore, she valued her mobile phone more as an entertainment device and a means
of sociality rather than a tool of productivity. And perhaps most importantly, as
elaborated in chapter four, her life was characterized by immobile mobility. She did not
have flexibility in deciding her schedule, location, or even the type of work she did. Her
lack of choice in such matters was reflected in her somewhat fatalistic statement, “If I
like my job, or don’t like my job, it’s all the same.”
From the stories of Wang Anmei and Zhao Ning, it is clear that the connection
between financial outcomes and mobile phones depends on much more than merely
ownership. Rather, monetary constraints, social networks, and autonomy in decision-
making and scheduling influence how useful a mobile phone can be for generating
income. The responses of Wang Anmei and Zhao Ning were echoed by other women in
my study, according to their circumstances. For example, women who worked as
waitresses saw no way for a cell phone to increase their income. Women who were
assistants in hair salons had a similar outlook, which greatly contrasted with their male
counterparts – the stylists – who freely gave out their mobile phone numbers in order to
build up a client base. In the markets, however, there were some women who were not
small business owners who nonetheless thought a phone could enhance their income.

292
At three different marketplaces, Chen Jingfei sold bric-a-brac, reproductions of
Cultural Revolution-era posters, and paintings; Sun Li offered blouses and sweaters; and
Luo Judi had a wide selection of hair accessories and earrings. Each said her mobile
phone had allowed her to take orders from customers, call for merchandise that was out
of stock, and check on prices at other venues. Outwardly, these three women were not
much different from Zhao Ning. They were young rural women, part of a “flexible”
workforce, and were surrounded by stalls offering similar items. They also enjoyed text
messaging on their phones when they weren’t occupied with customers. However, what
they had in common that set them apart from Zhao Ning was that they were all
employed by a relative: Chen Jingfei and Luo Judi by an uncle and Sun Li by her sister.
They also lived with this relative, who became like a surrogate parent. In this situation,
helping to increase the profits of the relative who employed them was understood as
something important and a necessary duty. Given the bonds between family members,
the reciprocal obligations that inhere in Chinese family relationships (how family
members are part of one’s “affective zone” as mentioned in chapter four), and the
longstanding tradition in China of family-run businesses, this is perhaps not surprising.
The difference between working for a relative versus a stranger was clearly articulated
by Luo Jidi who said, “It is always better to work for a relative. They treat you better.”
Again, we see an example of a technology used in certain ways as it is embedded in
already existing relationships. Zhao Ning and those like her were “working for the man”
so to speak, and thus felt no obligation to go beyond what was required of their job,
even though they had “pressure” to sell. On the other hand, those who were employed

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by relatives had a much different sense of obligation, which their mobile phone helped
them fulfill.
Mobile Phones and Job Seeking
Aside from raising income, another issue is whether the women in my study used
their mobile phones to search for jobs, particularly a better job. These questions cannot
be understood without considering once again Chinese modes of social networking, the
hierarchical character of Chinese society, and patriarchal norms and cultural biases that
especially affect migrant women.
As I discussed in the previous chapter, building one’s guanxi network is of crucial
importance in China, and this is almost always accomplished through a shared
connection with another person (same hometown or province, same school or job, same
dialect, and so on). In China there is the perception, if not the reality, that it is often who
you know, not what you know, that matters when it comes to securing a job.
63
For this
reason, in addition to one’s own qualifications and skills, the quality of one’s social (or
network) capital has important implications for the types of jobs to which a person
might aspire and for whether and how easily one is able to move up the social and
employment hierarchy. Mobile phones certainly enable migrant women to expand their
social networks by increasing their strong and weak ties. However, they do not
necessarily help them to build connections with those in higher social strata than
themselves due to the customary manner in which guanxi networks are built and the
rigid class and place-based distinctions that characterize contemporary Chinese society.
Still, guanxi networks and kinship ties are extremely important for rural-to-urban
migrants to be able to secure a job, perhaps even more so than for urban residents,

294
because of the structural barriers that migrants face in the city. Aside from legal and
social discrimination, they must also be wary of unscrupulous and even violent labor
practices that especially target migrant workers. There are endless stories in the
commercial and state-run media in China about migrant workers being beaten or
otherwise physically abused, having wages withheld, and being subject to numerous job
hazards including dangerous equipment and toxic chemicals. Female migrants face
further perils, for example at labor markets designed to facilitate the placement of newly
arrived migrants into suitable jobs. These labor markets often become the site for
predatory traffickers who lure unsuspecting migrant women with promises of jobs and
then sell them as prostitutes or as wives for poor peasants who cannot afford a proper
dowry.
64
Not surprisingly, then, all of the migrant women I interviewed said that for
their own protection they would never respond to a classified ad for a job or an
anonymous job posting. This was seen as simply too risky. Instead, I was told numerous
times that it is always best to go through a known entity such as a friend or relative in
order to avoid being cheated.
Despite these limitations, many women with whom I spoke did not seem to think
it was difficult to find a new job. For example, Pan Xiao Jun, who had worked at a hair
salon for the first eight months I knew her, suddenly quit her job one day. I asked her
why and she said she thought the hours were too long and the pay too little (she made
about 1,000 yuan per month, about $130). When I asked her how she would find
another job, she shrugged her shoulders and said:
I have my own way of doing things and I always have. I quit my job even
though others might not dare. I’m not worried about finding a new job
because I am young and I know they need people like me in these jobs.
65

295

I then asked her if she thought her mobile phone could help her in any way to find a job,
and she said she might use it to contact friends, but not to contact a stranger. Her answer
reveals that certainly the mobile phone could be used for the task of finding a job, but
only if a relationship is already in place. Thus, it is not the mobile phone that is the key,
but the social networks that rural-to-urban migrants have always relied upon to facilitate
their employment in the city, long before the arrival of cell phones. The phone could
just as easily be a landline for this purpose, although of course a mobile phone makes
such contact significantly more convenient. The situation described above is therefore
similar to the findings of Heather Horst and Daniel Miller in their study of cell phone
use by low-income Jamaicans. They also found that due to the nature of social
relationships in Jamaica and the vulnerability of the low-income population, the
perception was that in seeking employment it was always best to meet someone face-to-
face and to go through some sort of personal connection.
66

Though it might be easy for a migrant woman to find a job, the jobs available to
most migrant women are rather limited. It is extremely difficult for a migrant woman to
move up the job hierarchy precisely because of her status as a migrant woman. The
breezy confidence expressed in the quote above by Pan Xiao Jun about her ability to
find another job should therefore be taken with a measure of skepticism. She certainly
could find another job, probably without too much trouble, through relying on friends
and word of mouth. Whether this would be a better job is another matter, particularly
given the line of work she was in. In fact, shortly before I left Beijing Pan Xiao Jun had
returned to the original salon where she had been employed. Even the migrant women I

296
knew who had attended various computer courses and other types of training with few
exceptions were not able to convert these skills into better employment. This does not
mean they might not in the future, but for the time being they tended to remain in the
same job they had had prior to the training or in a similar line of work.

Conclusion

An examination of the way mobile phones are integrated into the labor relations of
young migrant women working in the low-level service sector in Beijing reveals a
complex array of discourses, tactics, and strategies that are produced by gender-, class-,
and place-based power relations. In this chapter I have attempted to show how the
mobile phone is implicated in these power relations that circulate in and through the
work lives of migrant women precisely because they are migrant women. The jobs they
have and the degree of regimentation, training, and regulation to which they must
submit, as well as the gendered discourses that surround them, are all technologies of
power that shape their identity and attempt to mold them into compliant female “peasant
workers.” For some migrant women, a mobile phone can become one tool of many for
enabling autonomy and various tactics of resistance. However, cell phones can also be
used by both the women themselves and their employers to sustain gendered power
relations and forms of control.
Of particular importance is that the examples of resistance via cell phones
highlighted in this chapter are largely individual and symbolic, and as such might give a
migrant woman a feeling of temporary, fleeting empowerment while not changing or
challenging the deeply embedded structural impediments and patriarchal cultural norms

297
that negatively affect her. While I was in Beijing, I did hear rumors of factory workers
in southern China using mobile phones to send information to colleagues about higher
wages in another factory or mobilizing to demand more pay from their own employers.
Where there is a large workforce, mobile phones clearly can be used by workers to
mobilize for collective action in the same way they have been used in political
movements in the Philippines, Spain, and more recently, Myanmar. However, most of
the women in my study worked in small enterprises. Many had no colleagues, most had
three to eight, and the largest restaurants and hair salons employed perhaps twenty
people. Could a mobile phone be used by any of these women to receive or pass on
information about a better job elsewhere? Of course it could, but only as it is used
within the social networks which these women are a part. Still, many of the women I
knew who worked at marketplaces hoped to eventually one day open their own
businesses back in their hometown. It seems that a mobile phone will be a crucial tool
for enabling them to maintain and expand the networks that will be necessary for this to
happen in the future.

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Chapter Five Endnotes

1. I borrow the phrase from Ithiel de Sola Pool, though he used it long before the
advent of the widespread use of mobile phones in everyday life. In Technologies of
Freedom he raised concerns about the tension between government regulation and
individual freedom.

2. Katz, Magic in the Air, 8.
3. Winner, “Do Artifacts Have Politics?” 20.
4. Ibid., 22.
5. It should be noted that in January 2008 a new labor law went into effect that
mandated labor contracts, severance pay, and a higher minimum wage, yet
implementation, especially in small enterprises in the private sector (where all of the
women in this study worked), will most likely be uneven and difficult to enforce.

6. Urban women and college educated women also face gender discrimination in
employment. See, for example, Lu “Zhiye Xingbie.”

7. See, for example, Zhang, “Behind the ‘Great Firewall;’” Zittrain and Edelman,
Empirical Analysis of Internet. For a media account of the human factor in Chinese
Internet censorship, see French, “As Chinese Students Go Online.”

8. Jia and Weber, “State, Power and Mobile Communication.”

9. Qiu, “The Wireless Leash,” 76. On p. 83 Qiu gives as an example of such
broadcasting of a message generated by the Guangdong Provincial Public Security
Department wishing China Mobile users a happy May Day in 2005.

10. Ibid., 82.

11. “China’s Mobile Network.”

12. Qiu, “The Wireless Leash,” 85.

13. Foucault, “Power and Strategies,” 139-40.
14. Ibid., 337, 340.
15. Ibid., 341.
16. Mohanty, Feminism without Borders, 142, 143.

299

17. Ibid., 235.
18. Foucault, History of Sexuality, 95.
19. Foucault, “The Subject and Power,” 340.
20. Ibid., 342.
21. De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, 36.
22. Ibid., 37.
23. Ibid.

24. These campaigns have been aimed at everything from eradicating spitting in
public to monthly “queuing” days that encourage people to stand in orderly lines while
waiting for public transportation.

25. Bartky, “Foucault, Femininity, and Patriarchal Power,” 65.
26. Lee, Gender and the South China Miracle, 9.
27. Ibid., 128.
28. Pun, Made in China, see chapter three especially.
29. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 152-153.
30. Pun, 106.
31. Ibid., 116.
32. Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 222.
33. Ibid., 143, 145.
34. Bordo, Unbearable Weight, 119, 123.
35. The stories of banqueting and “eating out of the public funds” are legion and a
major source of concern about official corruption since in China the line between
private entrepreneurship and government bureaucracy is indeed tenuous. As much
research has shown, those who have prospered the most in the market economy in
China are those who were able to parlay their party affiliation and/or government
position into lucrative business opportunities. See, for example, Liu, Otherness of Self.

300

36. Ibid.

37. Interview with Ji Hua, Beijing, December 2, 2006.

38. See, for example, Katz, Magic in the Air, 87-101.

39. Interview with Luo Li Kun, Beijing, December 7, 2006.

40. Interview with Tan Fenfang, Beijing, March 21, 2007.

41. I should note that use of fictive kin terms is common practice in China and
was not unique to the marketplaces. It is not only young women who call older young
men “older brother.” A young man may address an older young woman as “big sister.”
Such naming is meant to show a degree of familiarity but also maintains status
hierarchies.

42. Spielberg, “Myth of Nimble Fingers.”

43. Interview with Huang Hui An, Lanzhou Market, April 6, 2007.
44. Massey, Space, Place, and Gender, 4.
45. Interview with Huang Hui An, Lanzhou Market, April 6, 2007.
46. Katz, Magic in the Air, 58.
47. Ibid., 59.

48. Pun, Made in China, 61.

49. De Certeau, Practice of Everyday Life, 30.

50. See, for example, Kim, “Korea: Personal Meanings;” see also Laurier,
“Region as a Socio-technical Accomplishment.”

51. Green, “Who’s Watching Whom?” 37.

52. Ito, “Mobile Phones, Japanese Youth,” 139; Ling, Mobile Connection, 100.
53. Interview with Wu Daiyu, Beijing, March 23, 2007.
54. A bus ticket for an hour’s journey probably cost her one or two Chinese yuan.
A cab after 9:00pm would have probably cost about 35 yuan. Migrant workers never
take taxis unless it is a dire emergency.

301

55. Interview with Wu Daiyu, Beijing, April 4, 2007.

56. Interview with Guo Yaping’s cousin, December 4, 2006, Beijing.

57. Her exact response in Chinese was, “Dangran bu pingdeng, danshi ta shi ta de
erzi. Ta shi nande, mei banfa.” Mei banfa literally means “no solution” but in the
context Li Xiulan meant that there was no solution to the inequality between males and
females in China and thus I have translated “mei banfa” as “that’s the way it is.”
Interview with Li Xiulan, Beijing, April 19, 2007.

58. Castells et al., Mobile Communication and Society, 247.

59. As I write this, the April 13, 2008 issue of the New York Times Magazine has a
feature story titled, “Can the Cell phone End Global Poverty?”

60. See, for example, Abraham, “Mobile Phones and Economic Development;”
see also Donner, “Social and Economic Implications.”

61. Interview with Wang Anmei, Beijing, April 11, 2007.

62. Interview with Zhao Ning, Beijing, April 5, 2007.
63. See, for example, the work of Bian, including “Institutional Holes.”
64. Bu and Qiu, “Report on Media Education Strategies.”
65. Interview with Pan Xiao Jun, Beijing, December 4, 2006.
66. Horst and Miller, The Cell Phone, 103.

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CHAPTER SIX: CONCLUSION

Underlying this dissertation are two profound transformations – one taking place
within a country and one spanning the globe – that are indicative of the forces that
constitute our current era. In China, the phenomena of globalization, urbanization,
migration, and marketization have radically altered many people’s ways of being and
understanding themselves in the world. At the same time, worldwide the extensive
diffusion of mobile telephony has ushered in new modes of individual and collective
identity, sociality, autonomy, and agency. In order to understand more fully one
particular intersection of such processes and transformations, this research examined
how young rural-to-urban migrant women working in the low-level service sector in
Beijing use mobile phones to negotiate their identity and create meaning in relation to
themselves and others in the city.
Particularly among youth populations across various cultures, the mobile phone
has been configured as a crucial tool for the presentation of the self, for distinguishing
and maintaining group solidarity and boundaries, for signifying style, and for
undermining parental and school authority. A growing body of research has therefore
posited the existence of universal understandings and practices associated with cell
phones and young people. While noting certain similarities, other studies have cautioned
that mobile phone usage must be understood as it arises within a given socio-cultural
context. Either way, in the bulk of the research thus far these “mobile, global youth” are
all fairly well educated (or in the process of becoming so), relatively well off, and
predominantly located in developed countries. On the other hand, scholarly inquiry into

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cell phone use among low-income populations and/or in developing countries has
tended to foreground economic outcomes while paying little attention to social aspects,
even though it is becoming apparent that these two are often hard to separate.
1

To address this gap and to add to the growing body of research on mobile
telephony, this study explored how young migrant women – a youth population that is
extremely socially and economically marginalized – use cell phones in myriad ways as
they navigate their lives in Beijing. I sought to understand how a specific discursive
context – China in the new millennium – produces particular power relations and
constructions of gender, class, and place, which in turn give rise to certain usages and
understandings of technology. To accomplish this goal, I conducted 10 months of
ethnographic fieldwork in Beijing, which involved interviews, participant observation,
numerous casual and in-depth conversations, and a set of mobile phone diaries. What
emerged from the research was a particular rendering of communication as transmission
and ritual, and a portrait of mobility and immobility – of people, technology, ideas, and
desires – as they are constitutive of the construction of multiple facets of identity.
Summary of the Findings
Understanding migrant women’s engagement with mobile phones necessitates
locating this relationship within China’s current quest for modernity and development.
Within modernities, various power relations and positionalities produce both
complimentary and contradictory understandings and practices of being modern in the
world. China’s reform path of the last few decades and the institutional barriers enacted
through the rigid hukou policy have created a vast gap in living standards and life
opportunities between urban and rural residents. They have also resulted in positioning

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the geographical terrain of the countryside and its residents as devoid of culture and
mired in stagnation and tradition. Within this milieu, the urban then becomes the source
of progress, and by extension the location for “modern” consumer practices, lifestyles,
and resources – namely technology. For young rural women in Beijing – themselves
configured as backward and of “low quality” – possession of a mobile phone serves as a
form of symbolic capital, signifying their entry, however constrained, into urban
modernity and offering a means of at least partially shedding their “rural essence.”
Though this urban identity can never be complete – as every migrant woman assured me
– this study shows that a cell phone is an important part of migrant women’s
constructing a hybrid rural-urban identity.
As part of being modern, cell phones are also linked to dominant notions of gender
that have arisen in parallel with the growth of China’s consumer society. Just as
marketization has tended to relegate women to certain occupations, it has also placed
renewed emphasis on the sexualization and commodification of women’s bodies, in
contrast to the Maoist past. Ubiquitous discourses of essentialized gender stress
women’s “natural” traits such as grace and gentleness and promote certain notions of
inner and outer beauty. In this study, a mobile phone was often connected to these
gendered discourses in the way it was supposed to look (pretty), the manner in which it
was used by women (“chatting” as opposed to passing on information via text
messaging, or gaming), and the way it was spoken about.
In the same way, mobile phones are constitutive of a modern discourse in which
possession of technology and technological competence is linked to ideologies of
knowledge, development, and “quality” (suzhi). For this reason mobile phones serve not

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only as a form of symbolic capital but also cultural capital in the sense that they demand
certain skills, literacies, and etiquette. A lack of proficiency in any of these potentially
subjects users to disciplining by friends or coworkers and reinforces marginalization.
In addition to the mobile phone’s overt connection to a particular type of
modernity, and to symbolic and cultural capital, in chapter four I discussed numerous
socio-techno practices associated with mobile phone use by migrant women. As a lens
for understanding the way mobile phones are integrated into norms of relationship
building, I drew a link between social capital, Chinese concepts of self, and guanxi
practices. Because most migrant women do not have easy access to a landline, cell
phones provide them with an important means for expanding their social networks, and
this is most often accomplished in accordance with guanxi principles. The names in
their mobile phones almost always have some form of shared (tong) relationship to
themselves – a colleague, person from the same hometown or province, a classmate, and
so on.
Perhaps even more important than the expanded social networks enabled by the
mobile phone, however, is the way migrant women use cell phones to enrich their social
networks. Given the constraints on women’s time, the circumscribed social world they
occupy in the city, and the far distances that often separate them from those with whom
they are emotionally close, the ability to surpass these spatial, temporal, and structural
barriers, through what I call the immobile mobility provided by the cell phone, is
extremely important. Thus, the cell phone appears not only as a supportive
communication device, but more often what I call an expansive communication tool
used to keep in touch with friends near and far that are both geographically unreachable.

306
Immobile mobility enabled by cell phones is not just a means for engaging in
“meaningless” exchange of short text messages or jokes; it is a significant way for
women to ease the sometimes devastating loneliness and isolation they experience in the
city.
Immobile mobility also appears in the way women use camera phones – to express
desires, to asset their own sense of aesthetics, and to plan for a better future. And, of
course, many migrant women were planning their own future through exercising agency
and autonomy in dating decisions. As a very personal device, the cell phone allows
them to explore their sexual identity and to develop intimate relationships, yet still
within existing cultural norms; that is, through a blending of technological (the mobile
phone) and traditional (intermediaries were widely used). The long-term nature of these
relationships, maintained almost strictly through the phone, again exemplifies the cell
phone as an expansive communication tool – used to transform selves and articulate
emotions and desires.
In chapter five, I more explicitly looked at the power relationships in which the
mobile phone is integrated by examining its role in migrant women’s workplace politics
and practices. Migrant women are predominantly positioned in low-skill, low-wage,
low-status jobs as a result of gender and place-based discourses. While workplace rules
and disciplines certainly vary, many women are employed in jobs that give them very
little autonomy while at the workplace. When a phone is prohibited as a means of
workplace control and efficiency, some women still bring their phones to work as a
form of resistance. Such symbolic resistance certainly does not change the power
relations of the workplace, and if caught a woman could be jeopardizing her income and

307
even her job, while her boss, of course, has nothing to lose. Nonetheless, the mobile
phone is associated once again with agency just by mere possession. In this regard,
mobile phones provide a means of psychological empowerment. Especially in the large
marketplaces, cell phones are also used to ward off boredom and to assert one’s own
sense of self, even at the detriment of other colleagues or customers who are ignored.
However, employers also use mobile phones to exercise their power in relation to
migrant women. In the worst case, with Wu Daiyu, an employer was able to inflict
rather severe emotional distress on a woman through manipulation and accusation. In
other cases, the original intention of the cell phone – keeping in touch with family and
friends – became gradually usurped, not in a malicious way, but in a manner that
nonetheless rendered it a very different device than what the user had intended. In still
other instances, employers (who were relatives) enacted a form of surveillance through
prohibiting ownership altogether. In this way, they can maintain their authority and
prevent the autonomy that they fear the cell phone offers.
A final issue regarding cell phones and labor that was explored was whether a
mobile phone enables women to increase their income, and thereby gain a degree of
autonomy vis-à-vis the larger society. The evidence from this study indicates that unless
a woman is a micro-entrepreneur a cell phone does not enhance economic outcomes,
due to migrant women’s positionality in the labor force. However, some women are
definitely using their phones in planning for the future by, for example, archiving
professional achievements with the phone’s camera, or gathering a network of strong
and weak ties that might be useful for a hoped-for future business either in Beijing or
back home in the countryside.

308
Significance of the Research
Based on the above discussion, the question now is what do we learn from these
women’s stories? What does a very localized study of a particular group of women tell
us about larger societal transformations and about the role of mobile communication in
these? How does this study add to our knowledge about the intersection of gender,
identity, technology, and power? There are several key contributions that this study
makes, and in combination they refuse simplistic binaries of inclusion vs. exclusion,
emancipation vs. subjugation, and agency vs. control in understandings of technology
and society.
First, within processes of migration, particularly in the context of wide-scale
urbanization, uneven technology diffusion, rapid societal transformation, and extremely
disparate access to social and economic resources among different segments of the
population, the connectivity provided through the mobile phone should not be
underestimated. This critical access is extremely significant given the temporal, spatial,
and institutional constraints placed on groups such as migrant women. Connectivity
means communication, which lies at the heart of the social world, and such connectivity
allows migrants – often isolated, often discriminated against – an anchoring and
inclusion in networks of sociality that are crucial to their well-being in the city. In this
regard, the sheer convenience of the cell phone is not a trivial matter. For most migrant
women, the mobile phone is not just one more communication device added to a fixed-
line phone and/or a computer with Internet access. It is their primary, if not only, means
of keeping in touch with others. Certainly prior to the arrival of the cell phone, migrant
workers remained in contact with family and very close friends, through using public

309
phones, writing letters, with pagers, and so forth. However, the transformation in ease
and frequency of access facilitated via the mobile phone is hard to fathom for those of
us who have been surrounded by ubiquitous telephony our entire lives. For migrant
women, and most likely for other populations with similarly constrained material
circumstances, inclusion in social networks via the mobile phone thus serves as a
counter-domination tactic against such limiting and limited life conditions.
Second, this research suggests that a notion of socio-techno practices forecloses
deterministic arguments regarding technology as something sweeping in and creating
radical changes to social and cultural life regardless of human agency. At the same time,
understanding how socio-techno practices are grounded in the material conditions of
everyday life allows insight into the constitutive nature of identity and technology. As a
mobile phone is embedded in a particular discursive context – a particular assemblage –
it is articulated to myriad practices, representations, and feelings that are productive of
identity in this context. Thus, to say that for migrant women the mobile phone is part of
forming a “modern” identity means that the cell phone is articulated to a sense of
selfhood associated with urban life and not the countryside. In another context, such an
articulation might not occur; likewise, to say that a mobile phone is “cool” or
“fashionable” does not mean the same thing as saying it is “modern.”
A focus on socio-techno practices also enables us to see how identity, sociality,
and technology are intricately connected. Identity is not a solely individual project;
rather, people shape themselves in relation to others in various ways, in this case
through mobile phones. Thus, mobile phones are integrated into current social practices
– such as guanxi – that dictate appropriate notions of relation building and sociability.

310
At the same time, a cell phone opens up new possibilities for the enactment of social
practices. Alternate spaces give rise to transformations, rather than ruptures, as
evidenced in the way migrant women use mobile phones for dating and intimacy. Still,
socio-techno practices may be implicated in new modes of exclusion when, for
example, certain users are not proficient in competencies and rules that arise in relation
to technology.
Third, and closely related to the above point, this study sheds light on the
constitutive nature of gender, technology, and power. Unlike several previous feminist
critiques of technology, what this study reveals is that it is not that women are left out in
relations of technology. Migrant women certainly participate in China’s “mobile
revolution” and this participation is important not only for their inclusion in sociality,
but also as a way for them to understand and affirm their gender identity. The manner in
which this gender identity is expressed – particularly through emphasis on the feminine
appearance of the phone – shows that technology also has a disciplining function. As a
mobile phone is embedded in notions of dominant femininity, it serves to reproduce and
create new disciplinary practices of femininity. Thus, Foucault’s notion of technologies
of the self is particularly relevant to the technology of the cell phone. Mobile phones are
a transmission device, yet they are also employed to effect change on one’s mental or
physical body, in this case in alignment with essentialized notions of gender.
While women participate in mobile telephony in equal numbers to men, at the
same time, unequal material conditions of men and women – the result of structural
impediments and social constructions of gender – mean that certain women’s access to
and usage of technology are more constrained. If we read this as resulting only from

311
economic factors we miss the larger way in which power operates to create a discursive
context that produces not only gendered practices but also gendered understandings of
technology use. These gendered discourses, which intersect with constructions of class
and place, circulate at the most mundane level to perpetuate asymmetries in men and
women’s relationship to technology.
Given that mobile phones can help to reify class and gender differences and
exclusions, does this mean a mobile phone is just another consumer item, the desire for
which operates to subsume capitalism’s extraction of migrant women’s surplus labor
while promising superficial transformative possibilities? In several studies of migrants
in different cultures, scholars point to migrant workers’ participation in exploitative
labor as evidence that they are deceived (or duped) into laboring only to use the fruits of
their work to perpetuate the very system that exploits them. Of course, cell phones do
encourage the capitalist consumption that would be impossible without the labor of the
“docile body” of the migrant worker. However, this argument is both problematic and
simplistic. It presents once again the scholar with the “view from nowhere” (in Susan
Bordo’s words) whose own labor somehow does not reproduce a less than perfect
system, and whose own consumption practices do not enable the very relations of global
capital they are critiquing.
This study argues that rather than being configured as one more ruse of capital,
mobile phones should be seen as an important way for people to construct identity,
engage in important modes of sociality, and exercise agency and autonomy in decisions
regarding time, money, leisure, and intimacy. In other words, the mobile phone is

312
embedded in myriad forms of personal meaning and transformation, and brings many
forms of pleasure.
A final contribution of this study is in regards to the connection between
technology, women’s autonomy, and social change in China. Clearly mobile phones do
not by their mere existence fundamentally alter the structural and material conditions
that serve both to enable and constrain possibilities for personal autonomy or societal
change. Just as with the question of whether migration itself enables greater autonomy
for Chinese rural women, the connection between mobile phones and women’s
autonomy does not have a singular answer since autonomy is rarely “all or nothing;”
rather, there are degrees of autonomy. Certainly the existence of increasing numbers of
migrants in China’s cities has troubled the binaries of urban and rural that are
entrenched in Chinese culture. In the same way, the presence of rural women in cities
has slowly chipped away at patriarchal traditions that inhibit their autonomy.
Although generally speaking in the city young migrant women are in positions of
weakness vis-à-vis their employers and the overall society, their use of mobile phones
nonetheless challenges patriarchal norms. While their cell phone resistance in the
workplace is largely symbolic, their use of mobile phones to build up contacts for future
employment and business opportunities is one way women are attempting to transform
their position in the larger society. Perhaps migrant women’s autonomy in dating
decisions is the most significant challenge to rural traditions regarding young women.
Though rural marital practices can vary according to region, in many cases young
women’s choices in marriage can be extremely constrained. In chapter four I cited
research that showed the unpredictability of whether romantic relationships that women

313
establish in the city will outlast their sojourn there, yet the fact is that ever larger
numbers of migrant women are using mobile phones to establish and maintain intimate
relationships. This phenomenon, in connection to the reality that more and more women
are staying longer or permanently in the city, implies there is reason to believe these
relationships will last. Thus, while these uses of mobile phones do not destroy
patriarchy, they certainly can challenge and weaken its grip.
This study has several implications for cultural studies, feminist theory, and
studies of new communication technologies. In particular it adds to the body of
scholarship that insists that practices and understandings of new communication
technologies must be studied not only among a certain age group or gender, but as these
are intricately connected to and arise within a particular discursive context. In this way,
we can see similarities in technology use across cultures and also extract the fine
nuances and diverse shades of meaning that technologies have for different groups,
thereby creating a richer, “thicker” understanding of “technological culture.” This
research also shows that to study the connection between technology and identity
necessitates examining multiple facets of identity and myriad ways in which identity is
constructed in relation to self and others. Finally, this research reveals that studying the
mobility of people and technology may be as much about studying conditions of
immobility.
This fieldwork examined one particular group of women – rural women working
in Beijing’s low-level service sector – to explore how mobile phones are increasingly
playing a role in the constitution of identity and the transformation of the self. There is
still much research to be done regarding the role of cell phones in Chinese life,

314
including among other groups of migrant women and among China’s 55 (non-Han)
ethnic minorities. As some migrant women eventually return home, whether and how
mobile telephony enables long-term changes in their lives is another important question.
In the same way, as the Chinese government continues to make a more concerted effort
to try and close the ever-widening disparities between urban and rural areas, one focus
of their policies has been bringing both fixed-line and mobile telephony to the
countryside. As such, the manner in which young rural men and women engage with
mobile phones will be a rich field for exploration. Will it mean the mobile phone will no
longer be configured as an implement of urban modernity? As the urban is associated
with progress and development, so too it is likely that the mobile phone will be
understood by rural young people as the “modern” coming to the countryside. Yet, what
other meanings will mobile phones have to those in rural areas? Could a greater flow of
information and connectivity help break down the rigid divide between the city and the
countryside? As mobile telephony spreads as part of an overall development strategy,
will this help to erase not only urban-rural disparities but also discursive constructions
of the countryside as hopelessly backward? As these questions reveal, there is still much
to be learned about the mobile phone among migrants, the rural populace, and the larger
Chinese society.
In closing, a recent event in China perhaps best captures the significance of this
research and the importance of mobile phone scholarship more generally. On May 12,
2008 at approximately 2:28 pm Beijing time, an earthquake measuring 7.9 on the
Richter scale struck China’s Wenchuan County in Sichuan Province. The quake was the
most devastating in recent Chinese history – at the time of this writing there are nearly

315
70,000 dead, close to 18,000 missing, hundreds of thousands injured, and millions left
homeless.
2
As the news of this quake continues to dominate the foreign and Chinese
media, it is hard to miss how this tragic event has brought to the fore several aspects of
this study, including the significant role of cell phones to transmit information and to
connect across distances; the vast inequalities between China’s rural and urban areas,
developed and less developed regions, and haves and have-nots (hundreds of rural
schools collapsed killing close to 9,000 children, mostly from poor families, while
government buildings and schools for wealthier children largely remained standing);
and the heart-wrenching anxiety of migrant workers from Sichuan, many in Beijing,
who were separated from children or other family members and could only wonder
about their fate.
Of the hundreds of news stories the earthquake has generated, there is one that
profoundly communicates how the cell phone is intimately connected to identity and
personal meaning. According to the Xinhua news agency, one day after the quake,
inside the rubble of a collapsed building soldiers found a tiny baby. The baby had
miraculously survived, protected by its mother, who did not. Tucked into the baby’s
blanket was a mobile phone displaying the following text message: “My dear, if you
survive, remember I love you.”
3

For all of these reasons and more, the mobile phone, as it is connected to people’s
sense of who they are in relation to themselves and others, in life – and even in death –
matters.

316
Conclusion Endnotes

1. Donner “Mobile Behaviors of Kigali’s Microentrepreneurs;” Horst and Miller,
The Cell Phone.

2. http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2008-06-08/160115705516.shtml.

3. http://www.sc.xinhuanet.com/content/2008-05/17/content_13288295.htm. For a
report in English, see Block, “Emotional Aftershocks.”

317
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APPENDIX 1: INTERVIEW QUESTIONNAIRE

This interview is designed to gather information about your use of new communication
technologies. In the first part, you will be asked some general background questions
about yourself. In the second part, you will be asked about your traditional media use as
well as your use of such devices as mobile phones, computers, and portable music
players. The information you provide in this interview will be kept confidential. All of
your answers are voluntary. You may skip any questions you do not want to answer.

Background Questions:

1. How did you first decide to come to Beijing?
2. Did you already know anyone in Beijing?
3. How did you find a job?
4. What were your original goals in coming here? Have they changed since you’ve
been here?
5. How long have you been here?
6. How long do you think you will stay?
7. What year were you born?

Traditional Media
8. Which newspapers, if any, do you read on a regular basis?
9. Which magazines, if any, do you read on a regular basis?
10. Which television shows, if any, do you watch on a regular basis?
11. Which radio stations, if any, do you listen to on a regular basis?

Technology Questions:
Mobile Phones:
12. Do you own a mobile phone?
(If yes to question 12, the interviewee will be asked questions 13 – 27)
13. When did you first get a mobile phone?
14. Do you have a service contract or a pre-paid phone?
15. What kind of mobile phone do you have?
16. How did you decide to buy this type of mobile phone?
17. Have you personalized your phone in any way (with phone jewelry, wallpaper,
ringtones, etc.)? If yes, how did you choose these personalized aspects?
18. What do you mainly use your phone for (e.g. calling, texting, taking pictures, etc.)?
19. With whom do you usually communicate via mobile phone?
20. Where do you usually use your phone?
21. Are there places or times when you are not allowed to use your phone?
22. Are there places or times when you do not feel comfortable using your phone?
23. Has the ability to use a mobile phone changed your daily life in any way? If so,
how?
24. What does your mobile phone mean to you?
25. Would your life be different without a mobile phone? If yes, how?
26. What are the positive aspects of owning or using a mobile phone, if any?
27. What are the negative aspects of owning or using a mobile phone, if any?

345
Computers:
28. Do you use computers?
(If yes to question 28, the interviewee will be asked questions 29 – 42)
29. If yes, when and where did you learn how to use a computer?
30. How often do you use a computer?
31. What do you most often do on a computer (word processing, email, surfing the
web)?
32. Where do you most often use a computer (work, home, café, etc.)?
33. If you use email, who are the people you exchange email with most often?
34. If you visit chat rooms, which types of chat rooms to you enjoy?
35. If you surf the web, what types of websites do you like to visit?
36. Has the ability to use a computer changed your daily life in any way? If so, how?
37. Would your life be different without access to a computer?
38. Would your life be different without access to the Internet?
39. What are the positive aspects of using email, if any?
40. What are the negative aspects of using email, if any?
41. What are the positive aspects of surfing the web, if any?
42. What are the negative aspects of surfing the web, if any?

Digital Music Players:
43. Do you own a portable digital music player?
(If yes to question 43, the interviewee will be asked questions 44 – 56)
44. If yes, what kind?
45. How long have you owned it?
46. How did you decide to buy this type of music player?
47. Have you personalized the appearance of your music player in any way (with
jewelry, different skins, etc.)? If yes, how did you choose these personalized
aspects?
48. What do you like to listen to most on your music player?
49. When and where do you most often use your music player?
50. Are there places or times when you are not allowed to use your music player?
51. Are there places or times when you do not feel comfortable using your music
player?
52. Has owning a portable digital music player changed your daily life in any way? If
so, how?
53. What does your music player mean to you?
54. Would your life be different without a digital music player? If yes, how?
55. What are the positive aspects of owning or using a digital music player, if any?
56. What are the negative aspects of owning or using a digital music player, if any?

57. Of all of the types of new communication devices that we have discussed, which is
the most important to you? Why?

346
APPENDIX 2: MOBILE PHONE USE DIARY

Please use this form to keep a diary of your mobile phone use during a one-week period.
Please fill out this form Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday of a given week.
Include all text messages, voice calls, mobile Internet, camera use, file downloading or
sending, and game playing during an entire day. Please use one form per mobile phone
use. If you called or texted the same person more than once on the same day, you can
use the same form for each contact. Try to fill out this form within 24 hours of the day
being recorded.

Date: ______________________
Time: ______________________
Sender: _____________________
Recipient: ___________________
Location: ______________________________________________________________
Who else was in the vicinity of this communication (within hearing or seeing distance):
______________________________________________________________________

Which mobile phone function did you use? Circle one:
voice call SMS mobile email mobile web camera game
file sending file downloading other: __________

Why the above form of contact used:
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
Length of communication (to the nearest half minute): __________________________
Content (summary of topics). If there is content you would prefer not to reveal, please
write, “confidential.”

Any problems during this communication:

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Asset Metadata

Creator Wallis, Cara (author)

Core Title Technomobility in the margins: mobile phones and young rural women in Beijing

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Communication

Publication Date 12/04/2008

Defense Date 06/26/2008

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag China,gender,identity,migration,mobile phones,OAI-PMH Harvest

Place Name Beijing (city or populated place), China (countries)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Banet-Weiser, Sarah (committee chair), Ball-Rokeach, Sandra (committee member), Castells, Manuel (committee member), Rosen, Stanley (committee member)

Creator Email carawallis@gmail.com,cwallis@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-m1863

Unique identifier UC1231832

Identifier etd-Wallis-2430 (filename),usctheses-m40 (legacy collection record id),usctheses-c127-139764 (legacy record id),usctheses-m1863 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-Wallis-2430.pdf

Dmrecord 139764

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Wallis, Cara

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Repository Name Libraries, University of Southern California

Repository Location Los Angeles, California

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu