Tingting Liu

What are the intimate aspirations and everyday romantic lives of those who sustain China’s ‘world factory’? This book explores how digital dating platforms are reshaping relationships, partner selection and marriage among rural-to-urban migrant workers — a demographic that is often overlooked in studies of digital life. Drawing on thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Pearl River Delta factory towns, the study follows 62 migrant workers as they navigate love, desire and social expectations. It reveals how online dating creates new possibilities while also reinforcing existing inequalities. Platform features influence how users present themselves and form connections; however, family expectations, class divisions and gender norms still structure romantic choices. To explain this dynamic, the book introduces the concept of 'digital capital' to illustrate how familiarity with platforms and communication styles can improve relationship prospects, while remaining unevenly distributed. Conducted roughly a decade ago, when platformisation was still in its early stages, the stories in this book now often feel strikingly romantic compared to the increasingly gentrified landscape of contemporary digital dating. This book will interest scholars and students of sociology, anthropology, digital media studies and gender studies, particularly those examining digital intimacy, social inequality, migration and contemporary Chinese society. It will also speak to readers who enjoy non-fiction love stories.

In large cities of the Global South, an immersion in mass consumer culture is no longer the domain of the rich. This book offers a transnational examination of how global economic development has transformed consumption, identity, and culture among the former urban poor. The book presents a wide-ranging exploration of new consumer cultures of the former urban poor across four different cities: Guangzhou, Metro Manila, Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro. It aims to reorient current discussions about consumer culture and economic development, and brings explorations of the cultural dimensions of globalisation and economy to a transregional scale. In doing so, the book contributes to interdisciplinary discussions of culture and globalisation by documenting the rise and importance of some of the world’s largest and fastest growing groups of consumers