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This paper studies a group of female sex workers and their ambivalent experiences of home in Dongguan, China's so-called sin city, before the local government technically cracked down on the city's sex industry in 2014. It has two objectives. First, we explore these workers' life journey: spatially from their rural hometown to Dongguan, socially from domestic migrants to sex workers, and subjectively from poor persons to extravagant spenders. Through this journey-based perspective, we show that the departure from one home opens a door to another home, but the door to the sex industry engulfs our respondents into a perpetual condition of unhomely life. Second, we analyze sex workers' practices of (un)homely life in various spaces of working (sauna), dwelling (rented apartment), and consumption (shopping center) in Dongguan and their imagination of a new home. We argue that home is a liminal space of ambivalent experiences that revolve around dichotomous distinctions between privacy and publicity, friendship and segregation, marginalization and belonging. This paper contributes to the critical geographies of home by incorporating these ambivalent experiences of home into sex workers' life journey of leaving and making home in the context of China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the lifestyle migration of Houniao ('snowbirds'), who are mostly retirees from north China. Drawing on the case of Sanya, a tropical city, it explores the emplacement of the Houniao and the displacement of local elders, and interrogates how everyday practices and contested meanings assigned to lifestyles are embedded into the reconstruction of their linkages with place. The Houniao enjoy privileged status and their mobile life is considered progressive and modern. They experience alienation in Sanya due to cultural differences and their disinterest in integration, but facilitate their emplacement through the reproduction of familiar sociocultural networks at the beach during everyday leisure routines. In contrast, the traditional life of local residents is deemed passive and outdated by the Houniao and the local government. Local elders constitute a minority in seaside recreation and, despite their host identity, constantly feel a sense of displacement. This paper contributes to understanding lifestyle migration by unpacking lifestyle practices and their relationship to place, something which has not been fully examined in extant studies. Its focus on the Chinese Houniao also enriches the analysis of the multiplicity of lifestyle migration and internal Chinese migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]