Hometown Relations in WeChat Practice among Internal Migrants: Rethinking Social Capital Logic in Modernised China

This study explores how Chinese internal migrants utilise WeChat to sustain their hometown-based networks by rethinking the western concepts around social capital in the digitally driven modern Chinese society characterised by normalised population mobility. We highlight that WeChat is a highly converged digital tool that is embedded in Chinese people’s everyday life and acts effectively as the central hub of individuals’ overall social networks. This infrastructuralisation of WeChat allows migrants to leverage bonding, bridging and linking social capital from their multidimensionally overlapped hometown-based personal ties, both close and weak, along with institutional ties within a single platform. We redefine bridging social capital as migrants are able to access valuable information and perspectives beyond weak ties. We argue that Chinese socio-cultural norms influence individuals’ digital capital, aiding in network maintenance and the exchange for social, economic and cultural capital. This study further identifies the divides in the capital acquisition and exchange processes.