Peasant Sex Workers in Metropolitan China and the Pivotal Concept of Money

Abstract

Abstract This article is a theoretically informed empirical investigation of breadwinning peasant workers in China’s urban metropolis of Guangdong and the values they ascribe to money acquired through sex work. The existing literature about money sits at the very core of modernity, individualisation and mobility providing endless opportunities to explore its variegated meanings in China’s global commercial sex industry. We situate the women’s desires and endeavours to escape from rural poverty in relation to the nuances of economic and class location in the urban context of post-reform China. We, then, argue that the rural poor migrant women interpret sex work and money as “contradictory” properties of individualism that enhance their personal options, as well as meeting their costs. We introduce a typology of the multiple roles that money plays in their lives. Our findings, we suggest, have significant “general” resonance and ramifications for the ongoing de-collectivisation of rural Chinese society.