Working-class ICTs, migrants, and empowerment in South China

Abstract

This article explores how and if working-class information and communication technologies (ICTs) lead to the empowerment of the information have-less. It examines the ways in which have-less migrants, an important segment of have-less users, adopt and appropriate working-class ICTs and the subsequent empowerment or disempowerment consequences of this process. By using a new data collection method called ‘survey group,’ this study provides a combination of quantitative and qualitative evidence, collected in 2002 and 2006 in urban South China through a participatory empowerment design. Findings from the study suggest that working-class ICTs have diffused widely among migrants and that migrants’ socio-economic status significantly affects ICT connectivity. This impact creates openings for empowerment as well as disempowerment under a variety of social settings. The research design and its preliminary results have wider implications for ICTs for development (ICT4D) research in China, Asia, and globally.