“We Do This For Each Other”: Migrant Chinese Women Massage Workers’ Relational Self-Care Practices

Abstract This article examines the relational self-care practices of migrant Chinese women working as massage workers in the United States (hereinafter referred to as Chinese massage workers). Threading both the bodily and the intimate, Chinese massage workers offer care and relaxation for their clients through the modality of touch and quiet comfort. A wealth of scholarly work highlights the complexities of migrant massage workers’ daily lives and their paid labor of care. Thus far, the study of migrant massage workers focuses mainly on their romantic, familial, and work relationships. Little is known about the relational self-care practices that migrant massage workers engage in. Drawing on 20 months of ethnographic fieldwork, this article examines the practice of Chinese massage workers caring for one another through the intellectual genealogy of self-care in Black feminist scholarship. Through an examination of relational self-care performed by and for Chinese massage workers, this article shifts the focus from analyzing the expected performances of care-giving by migrant women massage workers within the economy of racial capitalism to a reconceptualization of self-care as a relational practice.