Boliang Li

This project works with a cohort of young rural migrant men in Shenzhen known as Sanhe Dashen on the Chinese internet—workers who deliberately eschew steady, contracted factory employment in favor of day labor, intermittent gigs, and long stretches of unstructured time. Rather than treating their conditions or choices as mere “failure” or deviance, my study asks what kinds of value, personhood, and agency are being articulated when able-bodied men choose more precarity over less. Theoretically, by engaging in three strands of literature—gender and masculinity, the anthropology of precarity, and theories of refusal— the project asks how these men weigh freedom against security, how they navigate the meaning (or meaninglessness) of work, and how they reinterpret masculinity when the provider ideal is unattainable or undesirable. Furthermore, it seeks to extend the theorizing of refusal beyond overt, political opposition to the ambivalent, everyday terrain, adding refusal’s efficiency as a concept into the daily economic life and class inequality. Methodologically, I combine long-term participant observation with person-centered interviews to track when and why jobs are accepted or refused, how Dashen arrange their time and money, how they navigate dignity, freedom, shame, obligations, success, and hope within their life histories.