Field Research - She is in Urban Village
The research chooses 3 urban villages with different developmental degrees as case studies for more in-depth fieldwork research. The research sites are selected from Guangzhou where has many typical urban villages and a large amounts of rural-to-urban migrants. After the research sites are determined, I divide migrant female into 3-5 representative groups, and screen out 3 different migrant women in urban villages for follow-up investigation. There are 4 factors are considered: age, occupation, family structure, interpersonal networks and social network (preferred to diverse social groups). After carefully selecting cases, the in-depth field research is carried out by observational method (natural observation / controlled observation), interview (open-structured interview / semi-structured interview) and story-telling aiming to investigate the basic situation of the researched urban villages as well as the factors influencing migrant women's interaction, experiences, perceptions and psychology. The emphasis is placed on the elements of spatial morphology, the production of space, socio-spatial practices, spatial assemblages, public/private space, infrastructure, psychology, cultural ethics, social networks and capital. The purpose of the interview is to gain a deep understanding of their cognition and demand for space, as well as the oppression and resistance they are facing in the urban village, through acquiring the daily practice and activity tracking of the investigated women.
Research Sites
Figure 1: Land Use of Research Site
Source: <https://www.gscloud.cn/>
<https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/23.1745/113.2915&layers=T>
Tianhe District , as the most prosperous district of Guangzhou, contains multiple typical urban villages. The urban villages here exist with the obvious close-proximity uneven development phenomenon, so I chose this district as the research site. In addition, the urban villages in the south of this district have been basically transformed to modern urban communities, which are relatively less and do not have much development possibilities. So I chose to do field research in the north of this district.
Figure 2: Photography Map of Field Trip
Source: <https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/23.1745/113.2915&layers=T>
This chart is based on the photo collection taken in my Field trip. Each rectangle in the diagram represents a photo taken in the field trip, and the color of the rectangle is the main color of the photo. The number of photographs of different areas indirectly reflects the sensitivity of the environmental building perspective to different areas. The colors in the photos of different areas reflect the dominant tone of the environment in that area. Visualizing the difference between different areas can stimulate the reader's imagination of space.
Figure 3: Three Researched Villages
As for the research site selection, I chose 3 urban villages (Kemulang Village, Meiyuan New Village and Xian Village) in Tianhe District, Guangzhou city. There are mainly the following reasons:
First, from the perspective of city representativeness, Guangzhou is highly urbanized, bearing a large amount of immigrants (9.6733 million in 2019), and the urban villages here are overwhelming. Therefore, Guangzhou is quite representative for the research of migration and urban village.
Secondly, Tianhe District is the absolute center of Guangzhou's urban development. This district contains the most developed business district in Guangzhou, which is a typical product of urbanization. However, the most typical urban villages in Guangzhou are mostly distributed here, such as Xian Village, Liede Village, Longdong Village and etc, which have been discussed by scholars from various disciplines. In Tianhe district, there are urban villages with different levels of development. At the same time, due to the demand for labor, there are also a large number of immigrants.
Finally, I chose 3 representative urban villages located in Tianhe District of Guangzhou: Kemulang Village, Meiyuan New Village and Xian Village, which respectively represent urban villages with different degrees of urbanization (figure 3).
Research Samples
Figure 4, 5: Research Samples of Three Migrant Women
For the migrant women samples, I selected 3 different types of migrant women living in urban villages (Tiantian Tang -- migrant worker, Zhenfeng Chen -- Shop owner and Simi`n Yang -- second migrant generation). They are all between the ages of 20 and 29. As mentioned above, the migrant women in this age group are higher than migrant men. On the one hand, this young group, to a great extent, represents the future direction of the migrant women in the new era. On the other hand, migrant women in this age group generally have a strong willingness to migrate, so they may live longer in the city and have a stronger subjective initiative and willingness to participate in the production of space. Therefore, the migrant women between 20 and 29 are of great research significance and also easy to access. The 3 interviewees have lived in urban villages for 4 years, 10 years and more than 20 years respectively. And their migrant experiences, family structures, occupations, social networks, and living statuses are very different (figure 4, 5).
Figure 6: Space-time Cube of Tang
As Tang went home, she was called to go to work. She then again took a 1-hour bus ride from her village to the workplace, which was marked on the bottom-center of the map. It was supposed to be a day-off for her, just like her husband. However, she would almost immediately take the job because her income was counted by the day that she worked. What was surprising was that she went grocery shopping and ran daily errands as soon as she returned from a 6-hour shift, on top of a 2-hour bus-ride. The GPS data shows that Tang would give up for day-off to earn extra income for the family, and still she would take her normal household responsibility even though she was busy and her husband was relatively free. Having little time left for herself, she almost went nowhere else on that day. She never made any decisions to make her day easier, neither. She did everything that she was expected to do; she took a voluntary sacrifice unconsciously because she was used to consider other family members over herself, and she showed almost no resistance to such an arrangement. However, it was also interesting to know if she took the randomly called-in work as a way to escape the urban village. After all, the pay on that day was so little that it made no sense for her to go through all the hustles of the long-haul bus ride.
Figure 7, 8: Space-time Cube of Chen and Yang
As for Chen (figure 7), the distance she travelled was the shortest among the three women. She almost strictly stayed in the urban village throughout the day. She went to her shop in the morning and took her son with her. When the shop was not busy, she drove her son to a movie theatre not far away from the village. However, she would constantly remind her son to watch the traffic even if there was no car coming; she seems to have an illusional idea of bad road safety inside the village when her son was presence. In Yang’s GPS data (figure 8), the avoidance of her living space is identical. She would travel on a taxi for a far distance, reaching where she considers as “urban”, and spend a whole day there. She escaped three meals from home, and spends very little time around the family.
Figure 9: Distribution and Daily Schedule of the Women Living in Kemulang Village
Source: Phone Call Interview
After my field trip in Guangzhou, I put the collected data into this diagram. This chart shows the approximate proportion of female characters in her village, as well as the origin of immigrants in her village. As well as the daily element timeline for women living in this urban village. I found that almost all women in urban villages were responsible for most of the household chores, even though some women had their own jobs or were very old. This is actually influenced by the traditional rural life mode. These women, especially the elder, housewife and the store owner, spend most of their time in the village. So they have more say in the environmental and spatial conditions of urban villages. At the same time, I found that in crowded urban villages, they also lacked entertainment space and public sharing space. The sketches on the right are two typical examples of an urban village environment. In order to occupy more space, women in villages in some urban villages transform their living and business space, some of which are effective, while others result in crowded space and poor environmental conditions.
Figure 10: Oppression Network of the Three Migrant Women
Figure 10 is my summary of the stress sources of the three immigrant women, which in fact shows their social networks. By summarizing, I found that the elements in the network were the main objects of daily interaction of these immigrant women. This network and their daily practices make up their living environment. On the contrary, the urban village environment also influences their social networks and practices. In field trip, I pay special attention to the phenomenon that the gender difference in urban villages is almost disappearing. There is not much difference between the dressing, behavior and practice of these immigrant women and men in urban villages. And they not only have to do the childbearing and housework responsibilities that traditional women take on, but also have to support their families. This phenomenon is reflected in my films. But I also want to study the causes of this phenomenon from the perspective of environment and architecture.
Figure 11: Photography Devices