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ABSTRACT
Creative class workers are highly mobile, yet the struggles, disruptions and inequalities that emerge in their new, trans-local, experiential geographies are usually erased in the upbeat, Florida-inflected narrative on creative work and creative class mobility. This article aims to break open discussions of creative class mobility with the insertion of affect. It argues for the inclusion of personal, affective experiences to complicate the fluidity, the ease, the resolve that are usually assumed in the imaginary of being mobile. Furthermore, the article builds on the increasing volume of scholarship on affective labour – conceptualized as the affective dimensions of labour – but via a different route. I argue that any examination of affective labour may expand from the affect in labour, to how labour affects; from affective labour to labour affects. This inquiry brings to mobility studies the resonances between moving (geographically) and being moved (affectively), supplementing cultural studies’ critique of creative work with precarity of a different category, that of the affective. The empirical section presents the affective accounts of three re-located creative workers. They show us that mobility is never as frictionless as it sounds, and doing what people love may well come at the cost of losing those whom they love. I tease out three themes for further connections with affect: ethos and values, gender, and technology.
Acknowledgements
I want to thank all the creator workers for making the research project possible; they were so welcoming, trusting, and engaging. I want to thank Yin Shan Lo for filming and documenting he fieldwork, and Rui Wang and Yvette Wong for their wonderful research assistance. I am grateful to the editors–John Ernie, Fran Martin, and Audrey Yue–for organizing the special issue, and their critical and very helpful remarks. I thank the reviewers for their support. This project was supported by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (grant number 259913).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Yiu Fai Chow is Associate Professor at the Department of Humanities and Creative Writing at Hong Kong Baptist University. His publications include Caring in Times of Precarity: A Study of Single Women Doing Creative Work in Shanghai (Palgrave 2019) and Sonic Multiplicities: Hong Kong Pop and the Global Circulation of Sound and Image (Intellect 2013, co-authored). Next to his academic life, Chow is an award-winning creative writer.
Notes
1 All the names cited in the article are fabricated.
2 It should be noted that Florida was not the first to argue for the importance of place to attract human capital flow. See, for instance, Glaeser (Citation1994, Citation1998); Lucas (Citation1988).
3 See Kong’s review essay on transnational mobilities and creative cities for an overview of studies that confirm or dispute Florida’s thesis (Kong Citation2014a). My own research on Hong Kong creative workers relocated to Shanghai and Beijing recuperates a job-first scenario embedded in a complexity of motivations (Chow Citation2016, Citation2017).
4 It is perhaps not surprising that human resources research on ‘self-initiated expatriation’ (SIE studies), that is ‘professionals’ reminiscent of the category of creative workers, is generally interested in examining the impact of mobility on the career development of more privileged migrant workers (Ariss and Crowley-Henry Citation2013). While a number of studies assume gender and/or racial minority as an analytical perspective, the discussions of social and cultural capital, national and cultural identification, as well as relationships with family and compatriots, remain firmly in connection with prospects of career development (see, for instance, Cooke et al. Citation2013, Cohen et al. Citation2012, Cohen et al. Citation2011). The current inquiry, while situating itself at the intersection of migration and career aspirations, goes beyond the career framing and may enrich human resources research with the concern of affect.
5 My interviews would typically last for an hour. They were audio-recorded with their clear consent, and transcribed verbatim. Follow-up interviews were arranged for some of the subjects whenever I would like to seek clarification or elaboration. Our conversations were conducted in Cantonese, and the citations in this article are my translation. Cantonese is the mother tongue for most of the Hong Kong people, including the three creative workers here, while Putonghua is the official language for the nation.
6 I have been writing and releasing lyrical works in Chinese-language pop music since 1989. To date, I have published some 1,000 works.
7 Julia was a magazine editor before doing advertising work. Both Julia and Peter were also freelance writers.
8 According to Love, Berlant’s style of writing encompasses her methodological and conceptual attempt to alternate between intimacy and publicity, between the particular and the general, even at the level of sentences – ‘Berlant’s sentences do not end or not exactly; more often, they double back on themselves, or spin out, or turn down a side-street’ (Love Citation2012, p. 322). What I am doing with this article is not in any way to attempt Berlant’s style of writing, but more a similar resolve to find a way to write affect.