Mobile phones and new migrant workers in a South China village: An initial analysis of the interplay between the ‘social’ and the ‘technological’

This paper is an updated and revised version of the conference paper tided "Cell phone in use: The touch of technology as experienced by migrant workers in a southern Chinese Town" that was presented at the 36th IIS World Congress held in Beijing, the People’s Republic of China between July 8 th to 12th under the Session "The Co-construction of Society and Technology in a Global World" chaired by Leopoldina Fortunati. This article is one of several research papers arising from two research grants ("Project on Cultural Hermeneutics" and "An Exploratory Study on Mobile Telephony and the Social Lives of Outside Workers in Southern China") supported by a research grant from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Besides the two authors, the research collaborators include Law Pui-lam from Department of Applied Social Sciences of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Cheng Weimin from Department of Sociology of Peking University, Liu Xiaojing from die Rural Development Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences of the People’s Republic of China, and two research students, Peng Yinni and Song Jing, from the Department of Sociology of Peking University. The interviews reviewed in this article were based on fieldwork carried out in Tangxia Town of Dongguan City in Guangdong Province between July 2003 and March 2004. A total of 20 migrant workers (13 males and 7 females) were interviewed in 2003, and 18 migrant workers (7 males and 11 females) were interviewed in 2004. Of the latter group, three had previously been interviewed in 2003. The statistics adopted in the diree appendices are excerpted from different monthly figures from the Tongji Yuebao (Statistics Monthly) of me Ministry of Information Industry (Mil) of the People’s Republic of China.