How does ICT use fit into social practice?

ICTs are extremely important for maintaining connections with distant family: There are more than 250 million economic migrants in China, and migrating to other areas to find work is a relatively common and highly accepted part of life. An influential study of ICT use among economic migrants in Chinese cities concluded that they used ICTs in a way that was very different than for local residents, using these technologies to cope with the hardships of their offline lives^[1]. The migrant workers we met in this town had relatively little interaction with the local people and spent most of their free time at home, listening to music and watching movies on their computers.

The town in which this research was conducted is relatively unique in that it has several local factories that specialize in making pressurized heating systems so many young men who might otherwise have to leave to find work can be employed in these factories. Nevertheless, many must still travel long distances to find employment and for these workers ICTs provide an extremely important connection to their families.

In this photo, a woman whose husband has gone to work in a neighbouring province receives her daily phone call and offers the phone almost immediately to her five-year-old son, who has not spoken with his father in 12 days. In a demonstration of the complex issues of ownership and control surrounding these important communication devices, when the phone rang it had been in the pocket of the family's 12-year-old daughter (who is not allowed her own cell phone because her mother says that using cell phones and computers too much is bad for her eyesight). The daughter immediately handed the phone to her mother to answer the call from their father. Then as soon as the son was offered the cell phone by his mother, he grabbed it from her hand and went running to the other side of the park to talk with his father alone.

Family bonds are very strong in China and ICTs play an important role in easing the hardship of families that find themselves separated due to economic migration.