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Intimacy as a Lens on Work and Migration: Experiences of Ethnic Performers in Southwest China

Online ISBN:
9781529225884
Print ISBN:
9781529225853
Publisher:
Policy Press
Book

Intimacy as a Lens on Work and Migration: Experiences of Ethnic Performers in Southwest China

Jingyu Mao
Jingyu Mao

Lecturer in Sociology

University of Edinburgh
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Published online:
23 January 2025
Published in print:
25 June 2024
Online ISBN:
9781529225884
Print ISBN:
9781529225853
Publisher:
Policy Press

Abstract

This book elucidates the intimate consequences of inequalities, and how intimacy, in turn, offers a fresh set of insights into understanding the multi-layered and intersecting inequalities. Based on six months’ ethnographic fieldwork and 60 in-depth interviews with ethnic performers in Southwest China, this book demonstrates how rural/urban, ethnic, and gendered inequality structure certain kinds of service work and migration trajectories, and how they are experienced through the intimate and emotional experiences of workers themselves. It coins the concepts of ‘intimacy as a lens’ and ‘border encounters’ as key tools to make sense of how close encounters between ethnic, rural, feminized performers and Han, urban, masculinized customers re-inscribe the boundaries between more and less privileged groups in China. This has intimate consequences for the workers: it shapes the kinds of people they aspire to become, the levels of respect they feel they are entitled to, the ways they understand their own ethnicity and its (in)authenticity, and how they navigate intimate relations with others in their lives. The book reveals how close attention to intimacy in relation to work and migration offers a fresh set of insights into inequality in contemporary Chinese society.

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