I am now in Wuhan, China, setting up fieldwork site. I’ve been talking to Wuhan University and some local schools about my dissertation research on analyzing how migrants’ use of technology is reshaping the urban space and how internet policies affect migrants’ communication patterns. Before I head to Beijing on June 14th to work with the CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) to look at how their policies affect migrants use of internet cafes and mobile phones - I thought it would be a good idea to travel to other parts of China to talk to youth and families about their use of internet cafes.

I am so glad I did this for 2 reasons. 1) because I now understand the extent of internet addiction as a serious problem among youth in China.
2.) and I have a better sense of the social context of the addiction problem among migrant youth in urban China.

There are critiques coming from the West about China’s “heavy handed” internet policies, such as the stopping of internet cafe permits. But many of these critiques don’t understand the social context of this policy. Internet addiction among under-served urban youth is a serious problem in China. A policy such as a temporary halt in internet cafe permits is an example of an state attempt to deal with this social problem. In the West - we tend to see any attempts to regulate “information access” as a violation of rights - but we do it all the time with parental controls on televisions, internet browsers, search engines and etc - so why we not willing to understand it within a Chinese context?

From my brief talks with the principal of a local school for children of migrants - I found out that the principal is absolutely bewildered by how to deal with internet addiction among the teenage youth. The school serves 1st through 9th graders - and he says that starting at 5th grade they are going to internet cafes for hours and whole nights to just play games - they aren’t doing their homework.

With this new information - i am considering changing the focus of my dissertation to be about technology usage within the context of an urban migrant family unit. I would still look at how migrants’ use of technology is reshaping urban space - but i specifically would look at migrant families - so that i can understand how the youth, mother and/or father is using ICTs. So a new focus would be how technology is used across generations within one family. For example - is the mother primarily relying on her mobile to find work while the teenage youth is using the internet cafe as a form of entertainment and hanging out with friends? What are they using to contact their family in the villages? to what extent are parents aware of their child’s use of ICTs? How do parents use ICTs to secure social resources for themselves or their child? I have all these new questions after my visit to the school and new framework in which to place internet addiction as a social problem.

i told the principal that I wanted to suggest some sites for the youth to check out to improve their english and math - he absolutely forbade me to encourage them to spend time online - even if it was for educational purposes. he then explained China doesn’t have any free educational sites.

when I spoke to the parent’s of children who spend hours upon hours at internet cafes - all of them told me tht they were fully aware of their child’s pastime - however they said that at least we know they are in ONE place and the internet cafe is safer and cleaner than where we live. Migrants live on the edges of urban areas, many of which may not be as safe as these internet cafes.

I suspect that internet cafes are a form of an after-school program for the kids - the parents feel comfortable knowing that they are in one place. I also suspect that the youth do not know how to use the internet for educational purposes - or more so are their educational resources in China for students? Must find that out.
I also think that parents aren’t able to provide as much material resources for their children compared to middle-class parents - but at the same time they still feel guilty or as if they aren’t doing enough. Therefore, giving them 5 RMB a hour for internet access is the least they feel they can do. It’s kind of like the candy problem in the village where I do fieldwork at in Oaxaca - poorer mothers want to give their child a full meal but are unable to - so they give them a few pesos to buy candy to fill their tummy up - to give them a fake sense of fullness. They don’t know that they are contributing to a future in diabetes by doing this - and even if they did - what can they do? their child is hungry - but they don’t have enough money for food - candy holds off hunger - and the kids love eating it.

ok back to the internet and China- I wonder if in a way parents are showing their care through giving their children $ for internet cafes and mobile credit to send text messages.

another thought comes to my mind is to find out how the ICTs reshape urban familial relationships.

ok will write more later - I’m writing from an internet cafe with lots of smoke so gotta go!

pic below -me with Jin Ge, founder of the school and the principal

I visited the school while the students were sleeping - i will be returning today to chat with some of the youth during non-nap hours. you can read more about the school and see more photos on my personal blog post about the school visit.

I did some preliminary fieldwork at the Xinke Migrant school in Wuhan. Here is a story that I think illustrates the misunderstandings about “internet addiction” among youth in China and why government initiated policies limiting internet use among youth will not be effective. These policies aim to curb internet use among youth in public internet cafes, not in private homes. Middle-class and upper-class families have computers at home for their child, therefore most massive internet cafes are used by low-income populations.

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About the school: The XinKe school is for children of rural-urban migrants in Wuhan, China. Since migrants don’t have a residential permit (hukou) to be in the city, they are not allowed to attend any of the public schools or access any government-subsidized social services. Therefore, schools for migrant children have opened up around Chinese cities to serve this new population. Many of these schools are unstable, understaffed, unsanitary, and under-qualified. The XinKe school is government certified, therefore they are slightly more legitimate than other non-certified, essentially illegal, migrant schools.

Each student has to pay around 600 yuan ($75) each quarter to attend the school. If students were to attend the school in their birth village, they would not have to pay for their education. The government made high school in rural areas free of charge in 2007. Yet, with rural economies faltering all around China, migrants are pushing forward into cities with their children, regardless of the costs associated with being “illegal” in a city within their own country.

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My story: The principal of  the school told me that students often sleep in class because they are not living in places with good shelter.  The principal also said that one of his biggest concerns was the negative consequences of internet addiction among the students. He told me that youth, as young as seven years old, would spend eight hours a day at cyber-cafes playing online games instead of using the internet to do their homework.

When I asked students why they spent so much time in the cafes, they repeatedly told me that they thought it was fun; it was a place for them to play with their friends on and off-line. They told me that they often shared a computer between 2-3 friends and would spend the time playing games. If you think about this, this is a very physical process that involves the body in a physical place. Inside the cafes, you often see 2-3 kids (genders don’t mix) around one computer. One kid is playing a game, while the other two are giving advice, yelling at him, or trying to take over the round. There bodies are touching due to the spatial constraints. Kids will grab each other’s arms, try to take over the mouse, and point at the screen. What I’m describing here is a lot of bonding and touching that takes place off-line inside the internet cafe.

The key is the off-line part: the internet cafe for the kids are equivalent to an outdoor playground. In Wuhan, public playgrounds are rare. Therefore, the internet cafe serves as a digital and physical playground for youth to spend time together in place.

I then spoke to the parent of a child who had been spending a lot of time at the internet cafe and was receiving low marks in his classes. I asked whether or not this concerned her. Interestingly, she told me her and her husband were well aware of his internet habits, but they were partially relieved to know where he was spending his time. They were happy that he wasn’t hanging out on the street with local street gangs or engaging in activities that could get him trouble. While they weren’t happy that he wasn’t doing his schoolwork because of his time spent at the café, they could at least feel assured that he was safe and in one place at all times.

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This story illustrates how parents justify the time that their kids spend at the cafes despite the negative impact on their education. Although government laws try to prevent youth from spending excessive amounts of time online at internet cafes, the laws will not be as effective when low-income parents think of the internet cafe as the most ideal “babysitting” site that is affordable and safe. Parents only have to spend 10-20 yuan a day for their kids to spend all night or day at the cafe. The cafe has a bathroom and sells instant noodle.

And for the kids - they just see this as a fun place to hang out. They’re not just gaming with strangers online. The cafe is a physical place where friendships are negotiated face-to-face.

If the government wants kids to spend less time in internet cafes, they should think about building more public spaces for low-income families. They should improve the access to education for non-hukou residents in migrant destination cities.

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In the first picture (top left), the principal is trying to reach a mother of a ten-year old child who has been spending every afternoon at the internet cafe.  The picture on the top right shows the internet cafe that the student goes to every night. It is a one-minute walk from where he lives with his family. The picture on the bottom left shows the student being reprimanded by the teacher for not doing his homework. The picture on the bottom right shows the student’s classroom.

More pictures of the Xinke school for migrants here on flickr.

Surveillancing Technologies and Informal Economy Workers: Creating Trust with Invisible People

Whenever I start a new gig, I always get to know the cleaning staff right away. To me, those are the people who are most overlooked for very sensitive work - they are trusted with the keys to the entire building and access to every office and desk. Also, janitors tend to have more personality than office workers (sorry friends!).

So I noticed that one day a time monitoring surveillance device was installed in my friend’s office - only her office. We’ll call her Fuerza. Fuerza is the janitor. 

Fuerza told me that the company that she works for (janitorial services are usually out-sourced) was worried other janitors were leaving early so they installed this machine to better monitor their schedule.

I tried not to show my frustration with this when I asked her how she felt about it. Fuerza told me that she was fine with it and that the company already didn’t show confianza - trust in the staff so she wasn’t surprised that this machine was installed. If anything she felt that now her boss wouldn’t be suspicious that she was leaving early. This had been a problem over the last year and she was happy that this machine could resolve this. 

I was upset at the installation of this machine for it contributes to this inflexible monitoring of work and time of informal economy workers. We have all this talk of flex work time for white collar workers but we rarely consider the lives of informal economy workers and their needs for flex work time. Fuerza leaves her house at 4am for a 2 hour public transportation bus commute to work. Even though she often times finishes all the cleaning by 3pm, she still has to stay til 4pm. She told me that she wishes on some days she could leave early to pick her son up from school or the library.

But what’s interesting is that Fuerza wasn’t really upset about it like me. She felt this relief that she no longer would be questioned about her work hours because for her nothing changed with her schedule- she couldn’t leave any earlier, but she could have the trust of her boss.

To me this is an interesting story about trust and privacy of low-income workers and in particular, informal economy workers. It’s always been odd to me the unequal power relationship between office workers and janitors.

I haven’t worked inside a corporate building for a long time. And being there reminded me again of the power dynamics of traditional American office life. Janitors are invisible. They float in and out of a room with no recognition, not even a face nod or a blink from anyone.  Yet we know of their presence through empty trash cans, clean sinks, and full water dispensers. They are so invisible yet so highly monitored. Machines like this speak to the low-trust that we have in their word.

But how could trust be built with people who are invisible? Is this the role of surveillancing machines? Building trust between people who have little physical interaction, personal trust, and mutual respect?

As interactions become less personal and more formal, I wonder about how this impacts informal workers. There’s plenty of literature and research on the impact of surveillance machines - such as airport security check, cameras in public spaces, and etc - but there is little work on the place of these machines in blue-collar work life or the lives of undocumented people. How will undocumented or under-served populations respond to ubiquitous surveillance and smart-recognition technologies? How do notions of trust, privacy, and judgement change with the use of these technologies?

What I found interesting from my conversation with Fuerza is that she welcomed the machine as a something that could help build trust, whereas most people have looked upon surveillancing technologies with distrust. People who are undocumented have complex relationships with technologies of surveillance. The underlying technology of this fingerprinting tech are also part of the very data scanning machines at the border that prevent her from entering into the USA.

This was also an important reflexive moment for me as an ethnographer - that I have to be aware of my own biases. I was aware of how upset I was at the installation of this machine - but this is because I have a very different relationship with everyday surveillance technology than an undocumented worker. If all of sudden I was told that I had to scan my hand to enter and exit the building so that my boss could monitor my schedule, I would see this as a form of distrust, but in this moment for Fuerza it was an opportunity to build trust.

The word “JANITOR” is from the Roman god JANUS-the keeper of keys. Historically cleaners were honored & trusted. Now they occupy one of the lowest social positions in the US. But not in my mind. Fuerza you rock! And you have one of the hardest commutes ever. Whenever I hear people bitching about their commutes because they chose to live in some far off suburb, I think that no one can beat you for the longest commute trophy.

Btw - one of my favorite artists is Dulce Pinzon. She is as photography from NYC. She has awesome photos of Mexican informal economy workers dressed up as heroes. We had a great time playing with her costumes a few years ago at my fave museum, Queens Museum of Arts!