Desiring singlehood? Rural migrant women and affective labour in the Shanghai beauty parlour industry

This article studies rural migrant women working in the Shanghai beauty parlour industry, focusing on how this industry emphasises affective labour and articulates it along lines of migration, gender and seniority. The analysis looks at three types of female beauty workers: apprentices, senior beauticians, and entrepreneurs. Bringing together Hardt and Negri’s (2004) theorisation of affective labour and Yang Jie’s (2011) notion of aesthetic labour, this article investigates how the affective and aesthetic labour demanded from these migrant women affects their minds and bodies, and their position and value in the marriage market. On the basis of fieldwork conducted in Shanghai, the article begins by exploring the ways in which the demand of Shanghai beauty parlour industry for affective labour impacts the ability of rural migrant women to enter into other forms of affective relationships. It goes on to argue that affective labour in this industry is not wholly negative, but modifies bodies and minds in ways that can be both oppressive and enabling, depending on, among other things, the beauty worker’s level of seniority. Finally, the article proposes that, in the beauty parlour industry, there is a reciprocality with affective labour that includes the workers as well as the clients.     

HOMEless: a case study of private/public inversion and the temporal–spatial exclusion faced by migrant domestic workers

Abstract

This paper is a case study of the shutdown of HOME (the House for Migrant Workers' Empowerment), a cultural and service center for migrant workers. HOME was founded by the Taipei City Labor Bureau (TCLB) and subcontracted to TIWA (the Taiwan International Workers' Association) in 2002, when the Director of the TCLB was the former labor activist Zheng Cun‐qi. For migrant domestic workers, the distinction between sold‐time and free‐time (i.e. the work–rest distinction) is blurred. Most of their supposedly private reproductive activities are temporally squeezed into holidays and spatially forced into public places where they are exposed to the scrutiny of the Taiwanese. This peculiar situation of private/public inversion not only results from, but also serves to reinforce, racial discrimination and class inferiority in their workplace (i.e. the homes of their employers). I use the concept of ‘bracketing’ to describe the spatial‐temporal strategies used by migrant domestic workers against this distorted inversion. I also analyze how employers ‘counter‐bracket’ migrant worker subjects as a counter strategy. HOME once existed as a ‘surrogate home’, providing shelter for migrant workers and allowing them to retain privacy during their days off. TIWA conducted organizing‐oriented cultural and political activities to assist the migrants in forming their own community, and challenged the spatial hegemony of real estate owners in the ChungShan District. However, when Yan Shang‐luan, a well‐known feminist labor research professor, took over the directorship of the TCLB in 2004 Taipei City Labor Bureau. 2004. “‘Minutes of the meeting for the analysis, review, and evaluation of administrative efficiency at the House for Migrant Workers' Empowerment’ ‘’”. 26 August [Google Scholar], she did not appreciate the function of HOME, and decided to close its doors. In analyzing the official rhetoric in the documents of the TCLB, I find that their decision to shut down HOME was a result of their middle‐class temporal‐spatial ‘habitus’. The shutdown became a counter‐bracket measure, which coincided with the real estate interests of the ChungShan local elites.     

Unsettled “structure of feeling” of Chinese migrant workers – cases from the service sector of Shanghai

The suffering, struggling status and controversial political identity of Chinese internal migrant workers have put them in the academic spotlight for decades. An abundance of literature has analysed the problems faced by Chinese migrant workers from mainly three theoretical perspectives. However, not enough attention has been paid to migrant workers’ subjective understandings and feelings about their work and lives. The current article tries to illuminate the ambivalent feelings of migrant workers of the service sector in Shanghai, based on a brief comparison between migrant workers of three Asian countries, and the interviews with 16 Chinese migrant workers, two government officers and two local citizens in Yan community attached to Po district of Shanghai. It is argued that the migrant workers share an unsettled “structure of feeling” in everyday practices. They simultaneously feel bewildered and sanguine, depressed in a sombre mood and happy, passionate and indifferent. The unsettlement of the structure of feeling constitutes a political passivity for migrant workers. It is urgent to find ways to break up such a stalemate of consciousness.     

'I still remain one of the old Settlement boys': Cross-class Friendship in the First World War Letters of Cardiff University Settlement Lads’ Club

This article examines the letters sent from former members of Cardiff University Settlement Lads' Club to two settlement workers, Amy and Edward Lewis, during the First World War. It argues that affective relationships developed within the settlement house prior to the war were subsequently utilised by working-class soldiers in their imaginings of home and community. The letters are used not only to demonstrate the interpersonal relationships that developed between settlement workers and settlement attendees, but also more broadly how the university settlement movement's concept of cross-class friendship worked in practice.     

Fear as political dynamics: Chinese peasant workers’ struggle over social security

This article attempts to understand the subject formation of Chinese peasant workers by exploring the emotional dynamics of their struggle for social security, in particular, the new political possibilities created by emotional forces, and the complex ways they experience and articulate the distinctive kind of emotional politics that binds peasant workers with the state in their co-production of emotionally charged power relations, identities, and subjectivities. It formulates an analytical framework that explores the emotional politics of fear that plays out in the context of economic restructuring. In contemporary China, the conflict triggered by social insurance contributions has become a component of the ensuing social crisis, where many protest events are triggered by widespread outrage at the violation of legal rights to social insurance and other welfare security. This research focuses on the struggle of a group of peasant workers at a UNIQLO supplier in Shenzhen, exploring how their fears for the future are constituted, and how their emotional feelings of insecurity motivate collective action and reconfigure their emotional identity and subjectivity in the face of extreme risk. Informed by a relational understanding of emotions, this paper investigates the complex ways in which the proliferation of fear, as a result of an anticipated pain in the future, articulates the process of subject-making in the face of increasing instability and precarity. The study attempts to demonstrate the centrality of fear for China’s sociopolitical order and the radical action of labor resistance.     

Migrant workers enchanted with consumer society: transnationalism and global consumer culture in Bangladesh

This article reconsiders the relationship between transnationalism from above and from below, focusing on the consumer behavior of migrant workers. Although transnationalism from below may be regarded as positive resistance to dependence on nation-states and global capital, it also facilitates incorporation into global consumer cultures. This article reports how Bangladeshi return migrants have been enchanted by consumer practices in industrialized countries and have transmitted them into Bangladesh. Return migrants bring consumption habits as well as savings and remittances from industrialized countries. Returnees consequently spread consumer culture to their homelands efficiently, promoting the penetration of global capital and further migration.     

The lyrics of laborious life: popular music and the reassertion of migrant manhood in Northeastern Thailand

Abstract

The focal subject under investigation in this paper is the gendered identities of overseas male migrant workers as presented in the contemporary popular song lyrics from Northeastern Thailand. My reading of such lyrics is informed by my ethnographic fieldwork of Thai migrant workers in Singapore. I intend to uncover some complex, cultural junctures of transnational labor migration, in which men, mobility, and music have come across and formed a social force to reshape cultural imagination of migrant manhood. I argue that popular music celebrates male heroism of overseas migrant workers. Instead of challenging existing structures of hegemonic masculinity in the region, popular song texts poetically reaffirm and reassert the traditional dominant gender ideology and cultural practice. Overseas workmen are usually depicted as hard‐working, self‐sacrificial heroes in their attempts to rescue their families as well as romantic, caring lovers and morally responsible fathers.     

Exploring distancing among Sri Lankan migrants in New Zealand

People who migrate often experience complex inter-connections between their countries of origin and new host societies. This paper explores the ways in which Sri Lankan migrants living in New Zealand navigate distances (geographical, social and relational) between their country of origin (Sri Lanka) and new host nation (New Zealand). To explore such processes we engaged eight Sri Lankan migrant households through repeat interviews, which were enhanced by photo-elicitation, object-related methods, and go-along techniques. Drawing insights from the resulting empirical materials, we document how particular places, such as culturally-textured kitchens, can bridge distances between the two countries. Our analysis also documents how migrant negotiations of distance are dynamic, relational and determined by socio-cultural contexts.     

Women's Work on the World Wide Web: How a New Medium Represents an Old Problem

This article examines how iVillage.com, one of the most popular World Wide Web portals for women, advises them on how to integrate the demands of wage and domestic labor. Specifically, the article focuses on the implications such advice has for gender relations within the family and for feminist politics in U.S. society. Discursive strategies in advice generated by iVillage.com support the ideology of postfeminism, which promotes individual consumer-based solutions for a primarily middle-class audience over politics addressing the gendered division of labor, both within individual families and in social structures. Such commercial Web-site discourses are consistent with those constructed by other mainstream media.     

Migrant Philippine teachers in Indonesia: the nexus between precarious skilled work,illegal mobility and the cosmopolitan

This article examines the nexus between the illegal migration of Filipino teachers as a form of precarious skilled employment in conjunction with the mobility of choice and hope found in the adoption of cosmopolitan outlooks. Catering to the aspirations of Indonesia’s rising middle class, privately managed “international” schools actively recruit trained teachers from the Philippines. Many of these teachers are migrants negotiating journeys of financial independence. These migrant teachers often find themselves arriving in Indonesia being required to work in the absence of work visas that were initially promised by their employers. Migrant Philippine teachers working in Indonesia compensate for these “shocks” encountered during their employment by cultivating a sense of cosmopolitan sociability as they aspire to utilize their professional and cultural experiences in Indonesia for better employment opportunities beyond Indonesia.     

Adaptation of Mainland Chinese Labour Migrants in Macao

This study explored adaptation as perceived by mainland Chinese labour migrants in Macao. Twenty-eight mainland Chinese migrant workers shared their lived experiences of crossing the Zhuhai-Macao border. Even though Macao and the mainland share cultural similarities, migrant workers did not perceive they were acculturating to the new environment. However, their personal and behavioural changes indicated other processes at work, as explained via co-cultural, differential adaption, and cultural fusion theories. Impacted by structural constraints, most migrants lived a border-crossing existence, marginalized in Macao, and freer in an enclave in Zhuhai. Furthermore, participants perceived discrimination, linked to occupation, language, and mainlander identity.     

Internal migration and the negative attitudes toward migrant workers in China

We examined the relationship between perceived group threats and citizens’ negative outgroup attitudes toward migrant workers using nationally representative survey data (N = 1219) collected from 13 cities across seven Chinese provinces. Additionally, we examined the relationship between intergroup contact and citizens’ negative outgroup attitudes toward migrant workers and assessed whether these relationships varied by cultural region and stereotypes. The results showed that perceived group threat was associated with citizens’ negative outgroup attitudes toward migrant workers. However, the strength of their relationships decreased significantly in southern cities. The results also showed that contact with migrant workers in general and in the workplace were negatively related to citizens’ negative outgroup attitudes toward them. However, it was noted that contact with migrant workers in general would be less effective when implemented in cities, where citizens hold more negative stereotypes toward migrant workers. The findings suggest that negative outgroup attitudes also exist in internal migration, especially in places with high individualism. Intergroup contact, especially contact in the workplace, is an effective strategy for enhancing group integration.     

Gender,affect, and landscape: wartime films from Northern and Southern Vietnam

Abstract

Examining two Vietnamese films, one made in the North in 1959, and another produced in the South during the American War in 1971, this article contends that Vietnam's landscape serves as an affective site for a gendered construction of nationalism within key moments in Vietnamese history. In analyzing the attachments that the Vietnamese and Vietnamese diaspora feel towards their country, I explore a topic rarely discussed in US film scholarship and historicize these filmmaking efforts to demarcate a different way of viewing Vietnam in film. This study demonstrates the importance of understanding how gender and affect are projected onto landscapes in a national cinema like Vietnam's. More exactingly, it emphasizes that affects underlying Vietnamese nationhood and war are undergirded by the political economy of film and filmmaking. My arguments point to the modes of production and circulation of film, which shape the making of affect in Vietnam War discourse. My analyses are framed by the questions: how is affect inscribed in Vietnamese film, and what are its effects on notions of belonging and nationhood? In what ways has affect traveled about Vietnam in the past and present moment? Who is able to access such representations, and why does this matter?     

Socio-structural intergroup characteristics and group-based emotions in three countries

Participants from three countries (United States, India, and Bulgaria) rated the socio-structural context between their nation and China. We explored the relationship between the components of the intergroup context (permeability, stability, and legitimacy) and five group-based emotions (happiness, fear, contempt, jealousy, and disgust) across these three international relationships. Overall, the results showed that socio-structural intergroup characteristics interact to differentially influence the intensity of reported group-based emotions. The intensity and predictors of each group-based emotion were also found to differ for each country. Together, these results show that simultaneously examining different socio-structural variables yields a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between the intergroup context and the emotions derived from group membership.     

Tackling the Issues: Meaning Making in a Telenovela

This article focuses on a Venezuelan telenovela, El País de las Mujeres (The Country of Women), broadcast to high ratings in Venezuela, Argentina, Peru, Puerto Rico, and the United States. Drawing on feminist media studies and cultural studies, I conducted textual analysis of the serial and in-depth interviews with the production team and audience members. I analyzed the production, mise-en-scene, and consumption of the representations of sexual harassment, domestic abuse, abortion, and homosexuality that are present in this telenovela's storylines. The analysis suggests that the inclusion of topics that have been part of the public debate for some time are accepted by viewers, whereas those that are controversial or not publicly discussed are not readily sanctioned by the audience. In addition, the study illustrates how telenovelas' stories and themes contribute to the public debate about social issues, and how production and consumption, traditionally represented as opposing forces, are deeply articulated.     

Mediated absent presence in forced displacement

ABSTRACT

For many forcefully displaced people worldwide, notions around one’s sense of “home” and “place” in the world are perpetually unsettled. This article explores how digital technologies interact with embodied, material experiences within the geographical location refugees are residing in. Empirical examples from ethnographic research conducted among Iraqi urban refugees, living in prolonged uncertainty in Jordan, shows how situated experiences of legal, material, and social uncertainty reinforce particular mediated socialities. Pivotal studies have shown how digital connections engender virtual home-making practices and a wide variety of connected presences. This study points to the other side of the same coin: the cultivation of “absent presence.” “Absent presence” refers to feelings—the ambivalence that experiences of prolonged displacement bring about—but also to active disengagement and affective tactics in response. These engender a further separation from the physical world where forced migrants are not deemed welcome.     

Use of evaluative devices by youth for sense-making of culturally diverse interpersonal interactions

Building upon recent research that defines psychological development as a continuous process of sense-making situated within a cultural and historical context, this paper explores how culturally diverse youth growing up in New York City use evaluative language to enact relational complexity as they make sense of technologically mediated interpersonal interactions with their peers. Forty-four individuals (ages 15–20) participated in a quasi-experimental research workshop that engaged them in the process of sense-making by asking them to write projective narratives toward a vignette depicting text-massage mediated interpersonal interaction embedded among monocultural and bicultural group of peers. Data analyses focus on evaluative devices used by youth and manifest the relational flexibility of sense-making by immigrant youth and their U.S. born peers across diverse relational dimensions. Results suggest that immigrant youth are able to coordinate diverse ways of interpreting interpersonal interactions across relational dimensions, manifest by varied use of logical/hypothetical, causal and affective evaluative devices. In contrast U.S. born youth largely use same frequency of evaluative devices across two relational dimensions. Statistical analysis highlights the use of affect in projective narratives by exploring a discursive learning hypothesis: that higher use of emotions in the process of sense-making by U.S. born youth gradually scaffolds the use of emotions in narrative by immigrant youth.     

Ritual and Social Change: Chinese Rural–Urban Migrant Workers’ Spring Festival Homecoming as Secular Pilgrimage

Drawing upon Clifford Geertz’s interpretive approach to ritual, this study examines the meaning of the annual Spring Festival homecoming performed by rural-to-urban migrant workers in China. Built on participant observation of the ritual and in-depth interviews with 25 migrant workers, I suggest that the homecoming is a secular pilgrimage, the meaning of which emerges around travelers’ communication about suffering on the journey and the pursuit of an ideal “home” through communal traveling. This ritual exemplifies symbolic forms of communication used to cope with and make sense of social changes in modern societies.