ABSTRACT
This chapter explores China's rural-urban migration through a study of informal economic activities among migrant workers. First, it examines the issue of informal economic activities among a group of male migrant workers in China from a cultural sociological perspective. Second, the chapter addresses the role of informal, family-based social networks in male migrant workers' identity formation, as an important resource in the process of learning to labour as a working class man. This has been under-researched. Then, the chapter highlights the challenges of social policy regarding informal employment within rural-urban migration. Next, it focuses on the rural men's perspective on engaging with the neo-liberal modernising economy within the city. Finally, the chapter argues that informal economic activities, such as the Guanxi networks, are not just important in facilitating China's economic growth, but that such a cultural practice is of particular importance for rural-urban migrant workers to negotiate their dislocated gender identities in the modernisation process.
