Migration, service work, and masculinity in the global South: Private security guards in post‐socialist China

Abstract

Past research on service work and masculinity has focused on men in traditionally feminized occupations or men in celebrated male-dominated occupations in the global North, thus neglecting the experiences of men in low status, male-dominated, and supposedly "masculine" service occupations in the global South. This article attempts to fill the gap by illustrating the problematic connections between work and masculinity among rural-to-urban male migrant workers in low paid private security guarding in South China. It examines how macrostructural forces of labor precarization, growing class inequalities, and the emergence of a discourse of consumer supremacy in postsocialist China has rendered the instrumental, symbolic, and social connections between work and masculinity problematic for this group of workers. It also describes five different strategies employed by these workers to achieve a sense of manhood: practicing combative masculinity; practicing toxic masculinity; constructing a discourse of professionalism; emphasizing their fulfillment of familial responsibility; and espousing an entrepreneurial aspiration.