Embedding digital money amongst Chinese migrant factory workers

Abstract

The rapid expansion of digital payment platforms in China is often held up as an example of how technologies can bring about positive social transformation, or how money itself-when rendered in an appropriate form-may carry social propensities. This chapter examines the use of digital money by migrant factory workers in Shenzhen, China in relation to such claims. I argue that it is necessary to unpick the multiple and contesting platforms, functions and uses of digital money that are emerging in the region in order to see how money is, to borrow from Polanyi, being shaped by market processes to become embedded and disembedded in social relations during specific moments and to varying degrees. This chapter will demonstrate how the divergent perceptions held by workers regarding the digital money platforms WeChat Wallet, QQ Wallet and Alipay suggest that while the embedding and disembedding of money is defined through market processes, workers’ own acute awareness of the distinctive nature of each of these platforms allows them to play a hand in shaping such processes. This points to a need to acknowledge how digital money platforms insert themselves between ‘people’ and ‘markets’ in order to mediate such processes of embedding and disembedding.