1st Edition

Chinese Labour Migration in the Digital Media Context

By Hong Chen Copyright 2025
288 Pages
by Routledge

288 Pages
by Routledge

What does it mean to a family when parents go abroad for economic gains while leaving their children behind? How do they maintain a family when living in different areas, separated for years? How do emerging digital media like instant messaging, social media, and webcam calls impact the everyday lives of today’s transnational families? Drawing on immersive ethnography conducted among UK-based... Read more

Chapter 1: Living Together Across Borders: Digital media, Overseas Labour Migration, and the Chinese Context, Chapter 2: Leaving Family for the Family: Overseas Labour Migration and Chinese Transnational Families, Chapter 3: Towards Traditional or Atypical Parenting? Gendered Blessings and Burdens, Chapter 4: Left-Behind Children as Mediated Actors: Beyond Receiving Care and Countering Surveillance, Chapter 5: The Connected Caregivers: The Bumpy Road to Collaborative Childrearing, Chapter 6: Techno-Familial Scape: Socio-Techno Family Practice, Mediated Socio-Structural Relationship, and Bottom-Up Transnationalism, Methodological Appendix: The Fieldwork, Bibliography, Index.

Biography

Hong Chen (PhD, Goldsmiths) is an associate professor at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. His research explores the everyday politics of care, mobility, and communication through ethnographic approaches, with a particular focus on how digital technologies mediate intimate life. His publications appear in Journal of Computer-Mediated CommunicationBritish Journal of SociologyJournal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and International Journal of Communication, among others. He received the “Top 1st paper” award from Ethnicity and Race in Communication Division at the 2018 International Communication Association (ICA) Conference.