Abstract
In southern China, the use of mobile phones is becoming a ubiquitous part of everyday life for young migrant workers. What could be the possible relationship between mobile telephony and job mobility among migrants? A study of 655 migrant workers conducted in 2006 in the Pearl River Delta found a relationship between job change among migrant workers and the increasing use of mobile phones due to more information on jobs with better pay and working conditions being sent to them by friends and clansmen. However, this portrait of migrant worker e-Actors operating in a “broadband information society” can only be viewed in the context of the migrant labor shortage in southern China since 2004. Of fundamental concern are the vagrant identities of this new generation of young migrant workers who are excluded from the host society in which they work but also feel uncomfortable with their farmer status in their home towns.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the research support of Prof. Yang Shan-hue and the Department of Sociology at Peking University for the help of 14 research and undergraduate students who carried out field interviews in Dongguan. The study was funded by a Strategic Research Grant (Project no.: 7001744) from the City University of Hong Kong. The members of the research team are Dr. Raymond Ngan (ssrangan@cityu.edu.hk), Mr. Stephen Ma (stephen.ma@cityu.edu.hk), and Dr. Pui-lam Law (sspllaw@polyu.edu.hk).
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Ngan, R., Ma, S.K. (2012). Mobile Phones and the Empowerment of Migrant Workers in Job Search in China’s Pearl River Delta. In: Law, Pl. (eds) New Connectivities in China. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3910-9_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3910-9_9
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