Minority youth, mobile phones and language use: Wa migrant workers’ engagements with networked sociality and mobile communication in urban China

Abstract

This article explains the networked sociality of young Wa migrant workers made possible through the use of mobile phones and social media when these youths are on the move. Troubled by poor economic conditions in their rural homelands in southwest China, many Wa youth seek work in the urban manufacturing districts in southeast China. Most now rely on mobile phones to connect with the social media, QQ. Mobile networks promote a set of networked socialities which are integral to the continuity and development of Wa migrants’ ethnic ties. Their networking practices show both the constraints they face and the potentiality they develop for voicing social inequality and reconfiguring the dominant Chinese language ideology in urban work environments. Their networked sociality is virtual and yet rooted in their real-world activities involving fragmented engagements with mobile devices and everyday language use. The sociality that emerges is partly a matter of free-will and partly structure-constrained.