Mobile Phone Use of Chinese Rural-Urban Female Migrant Workers in the Informal and Formal Sectors

• In Event: Mobility and Migration

Abstract

Grounded in the theory of “bargaining with patriarchy” (Agarwal, 1997; Kandiyoti, 1988), this study aims to examine how socioeconomically challenged women display agency to negotiate gender power relationships in their patriarchal workplaces through mobile phone use. Specifically, this study differentiates two types of patriarchal work contexts – the one where men usually dominate the economic resources of women and the other one where men and women share almost equal professional status. Differentiating the two types of work contexts enables this study to take a nuanced look at how adoption and operation of mobile phones by women to act upon gender-based inequalities may vary according to their situated professional patriarchal systems. This study is based on a fieldwork in an informal labour market and a fruit can factory as a registered private enterprise under governmental regulation, of Dalian city, China, with in-depth interview and observation adopted as two major research methods.

Authors

• Xin Pei, Nanyang Technological U - Singapore

• Arul Chib, Nanyang Technological Univ

• Qiaolei Chloris Jiang, Dalian U of Technology