Abstract
The past decade has witnessed a rapid growth in the number of mobile phone users in China. Mobile phones in China have, during the past few years, become sufficiently affordable that the overwhelming majority of migrants surveyed use them. Taking examples from Beijing, this chapter discusses the implications of mobile phone use among migrant workers in China. Through their stories from daily life, this chapter attempts to explicate migrant workers’ mobile phone usage against a background of their alienated situation in Beijing. The author explores the responses of the migrants toward their situation in relation to the social usage of mobile phone and specifically introduces and discusses four concepts for understanding patterns of migrant mobile phone use: feigned presence, concern in absence, jianghu relations, and romantic relations. This chapter ends with a conclusion that the patterns of mobile phone uses contribute to the change of migrant workers’ way of life. Remaining problems and future research avenues implied in this study are also discussed.
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- 1.
Data source: http://www.iimedia.cn/3/35/200766/093513.html
- 2.
Taking as an example a widely used China Mobile (Beijing) service plan, the fee for making a local call can be as low as 0.12 yuan per minute, while the fee for receiving calls can be almost free if a monthly fee of 6 yuan is paid. Data source: http://m-zone.bj.chinamobile.com/mzone/ywjs/tcyw/dtjh/
- 3.
This research project is supported by the Department of Applied Social Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Besides the author and the research team members are mainly from the Department of Sociology, Peking University, China.
- 4.
Thanks to Mr. Liu Xiaojing for his typology of modern migrant workers.
- 5.
According to the Beijing Statistics Bureau, in 2005, the average monthly salary of a Beijing resident was 2,734 yuan. However, save for the head security guard, none of the security guards interviewed earned more than 800 yuan per month.
- 6.
Different migrant workers offered different types of answers. Following Wang Chunguang’s view, we consider migrant workers as a differentiated group (Wang 2001), and each type of them has its own concern and characteristics. Therefore, mobile phone use may have different meanings to different types of migrant workers.
- 7.
Questionnaire data on mobile usage shows that Da Lee contacts his work partners most often (several times per day) and only contacts his family once a week. Simple frequency can be easily quantified, but such data alone can give an incomplete or even flawed picture. The strong emotional involvement that Da Lee attached to his weekly calls home can only be appreciated when qualitative data collection methods are also employed. We might have overlooked this strong emotional function of mobile phone–based communication had we not done the second round of interview.
- 8.
Dr. Ko-Lin Chin used the term of jianghu in his book Chinese Subculture and Criminality: non-traditional crime groups in America to refer to the underworld, that is, ethnic Chinese organized crime, nevertheless, the term does not necessarily imply criminality.
- 9.
As a legalist, Han Fei Zi considered jianghu subculture and the martial prowess of its elite (Xia) a potential threat to the state.
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Yang, K. (2012). A Preliminary Study on the Mobile Phone Use of Migrant Workers in Beijing. In: Law, Pl. (eds) New Connectivities in China. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3910-9_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3910-9_6
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