What happens to love when the people manufacturing our digital devices begin using those same devices to organise and navigate their own relationships? A UTS Chancellor’s Research Fellow in the Faculty of Design and Society, Dr Tingting Liu's research explores this question in an upcoming book Digital Romance and Intimacy Transformations Among Chinese Rural Migrant Labourers.
How digital technology is reshaping intimacy for China's migrant workers
Caption
Dr Tingting Liu presenting at Research Cafe
Drawing on fieldwork conducted between 2014 and 2016 in the manufacturing centres of Dongguan and Shenzhen, Tingting explores how digital technologies have transformed romantic relationships among China's rural migrant workforce.
These cities form part of the Pearl River Delta, a region responsible for producing many of the electronic devices used around the world.
“If you have anything with the label made in China, it is likely from here,” Tingting said.
Earlier forms of internet dating could connect you with people across vast distances, but location-based platforms suddenly made nearby strangers visible.
She spent time inside factories where workers assembled components such as the camera lenses used in mobile phones. Tingting pointed out how the smartphones these workers helped manufacture were becoming powerful tools for reshaping their own personal lives.
A key shift occurred with the rise of location-based dating apps.
“Earlier forms of internet dating could connect you with people across vast distances, but location-based platforms suddenly made nearby strangers visible. Someone living 500m away or 1km away, was made visible to you,” she said. “This matters enormously because migrant factory workers live in a particular social environment.”
How digital technology transforms dating
For migrant workers living in factory dormitories, this change was particularly significant. Thousands of young people had moved away from their hometowns in search of work and were often strangers to both the city and one another.
Dating apps opened up new opportunities to meet people beyond their immediate social circles and build romantic connections in unfamiliar environments.
“One of the central arguments in my book is that the intersection of migration and digital technology could give people, especially young women, a certain degree of romantic and marital agency.”
By expanding access to potential partners and providing greater control over relationship choices, digital platforms have enabled many migrant workers to navigate intimacy in ways that were previously unavailable to them.
Tingting’s research offers a unique perspective on how technological change is transforming the products we use and reshaping fundamental aspects of human connection, love and belonging in an increasingly digital world.