ABSTRACT
This chapter specifically concerns economic forms of urban informalities, with a focus on how rural to urban migrants seek to achieve work/life balance. It shows how informal working practices enable migrants to negotiate the balance of work/life in urban China and call for more research on the articulation of migrants' informal working practices and their everyday life to better understand the meaning of informality in Chinese urbanisation. The chapter draws on a combination of the perspectives to better understand the informal economies of migrant workers in China. It also shows how complex work/life balance issues are negotiated by migrant workers in their working practices in seeking to ensure economic security and social mobility. The chapter focuses on migrant workers in the leather industry located in Shiling Town, northwest of Guangzhou. It highlights the need for more nuanced critical theoretical perspectives complemented by empirical research that focuses on the heterogeneous nature of urban informal economies unfolding in contemporary Chinese cities.
