ABSTRACT
Law and Peng (2004, 2006, 2007) have reported on the widespread use of the mobile phone and Short Message Service (SMS) among migrant workers in Southern China. While there were only 85 million mobile phone users in Mainland China in the year 2000, by mid-2004, the number had reached 305 million. The national average penetration rate was 24 per cent, with the Guangdong province having an above-national average penetration rate of around 60 per cent. Migrant workers are among the lowest-income groups in Guangdong, taking up largely skilled and semi-skilled jobs in factories with monthly salaries ranging from 400 to 800 yuan (US$1 is approximately 8.23 yuan) (Law and Peng 2006). However, a migrant worker is willing to spend double or triple their monthly salary to purchase a mobile phone. The trend of increasingly cheaper subscription rates has turned these migrant workers into more frequent users instead of frugal users (ibid.). Law and Peng indeed describe a number of both social and practical functions served by mobile phone and SMS use among these migrant workers, including maintaining contact with family members in their home village far away from their workplace, maintaining contact and friendship with kinsmen/women (from the same village or kinship network) who are scattered in the Southern provinces, to maintain contact with ex-workmates, to get job-market information, and for purposes of dating and courtship (Law and Peng 2004, 2006, 2007).
