Floating Population, Homing Population? Rural Migrant Women’s Affective Experiences of “Home” in Shanghai’s Service Industry

Keywords: Home, Floating Population, Migration, Migrant Women, Service industry, Shanghai
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 08:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 09:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 63

Abstract

Shedding light on state-controlled rural-to-urban mobility, this ethnographic study examines the affective dimensions of “home” experienced by rural migrant women laboring in the service sector in Shanghai. To interrogate the nexus of tensions within these women’s home-sensing experiences, the study incorporated the ethnographic methods of participatory observation, in-depth interviews (n=88), workplace-visits (n=23), dormitory-visits (n=2), home-visits (n=2), and a photo-diary (n=1). Drawing on the in-depth interviews with the women, the first section summarizes how they define home in relation to their family, hometown, and emotions. The paper goes on to analyze three tropes of home in conjunction with the moments the informants experienced senses of “home”, those of living spaces, workplaces, and the city. The article discerns that notions of “home” are not only adopted by service companies to subjugate women workers but are also employed by the state to exert family values, thus controlling female’s (im)mobility through the traditional expectations of filial piety.