Abstract:

The previous researches about migrant workers’ dwelling patterns are all based on quantitative and statistical study, in which the migrant worker are considers the unified and abstract concept without history. This kind of research ignored the migrant workers practice process in the cities, including work, accommodation and social life. Besides, the migrant workers’ social network, which is important in migrant workers’ world, was also ignored in the previous research. This paper, under the perspective of social network, aims at transforming the abstract research to specific research, which is “the migrant workers study facing work practice” based on analysis of practice process. In this approach, we restore the individual features of the migrant worker back and put their work process in the center of the analysis. With the strategy of deep case study, this research explains the choosing logic of migrant workers’ dwelling in the city through the study about a migrant worker decoration team’s three housing sites. We propose the concept of “team-based jointly dwellings” as the dwelling pattern of decoration migrant workers and find out this to some extent is decided by the social network of the decoration team. The social network of the migrant worker decoration team has some features, including closeness, duality, workers’ strengths, family and friend relationship oriented. All these feature lead to the team based jointly dwellings. The closeness of the decoration team’s social network results in that the company has nothing to do with migrant workers’ dwellings; the duality of the social network, including friends and families social network as well as the institutional social network of the decoration team results in that team leaders chose to live together with workers; the strength of workers result in that the dwellings were paid by the team leader; families & friends relationship not work relationship oriented social network results in that the migrant workers live in the pattern of “extended family”. Besides, the feather of migrant worker’s own social network, which is that they live apart away from their children and wives, also a reason for the “team based jointly dwellings”.