‘‘First, it’s dirty. Second, it’s dangerous. Third, it’s insulting’’: Urban Chinese Children Talk about Dirty Work Brenda L. Berkelaar, Patrice M. Buzzanell, Lorraine G. Kisselburgh, Wufeng Tan & Yiwen Shen Research on stigmatized work is based on western adults’ behaviors regarding objective work features. Our empirical study extends scholarship by examining urban Chinese children’s meanings of work and occupations, particularly dirty work. Using hybrid inductive-deductive analyses of focus group and interview data from over 200 Chinese children, our findings explore their constructions of engineering as unde- sirable or socially stigmatized dirty work*dirty, dangerous, and demeaning or insulting. Although children perceived other work and occupations to have similar features, they did not consider engineering to be honorable, prestigious, intellectually challenging, or appropriate for their socioeconomic-urban position. Our study contributes to under- standings of children’s career circumscription and occupational socialization processes in cultural contexts and subjective understandings of stigmatized work. Keywords: Meanings of Work; Career; Discourse; Children; Developmental; Culture; China; Organizational Communication; Socialization; Dirty Work; Stigma; Engineering Research on stigmatized or dirty work*work considered physically dirty, dangerous, demeaning, or morally or socially questionable (Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999)*has been conducted primarily with adults, in western contexts, and with an emphasis on objective work features. However, popular and trade media note that dirty work Brenda L. Berkelaar is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Patrice M. Buzzanell is Professor and Lorraine G. Kisselburgh is Assistant Professor at the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University. Wufeng Tan is a freelance consultant. Yiwen Shen is Associate Professor at the Beijing Foreign Studies University. This research could not have been conducted without funding provided by the Purdue University College of Engineering’s INSPIRE (Institute for P-12 Engineering Research and Learning) program and the graduate students who helped collect data. The authors would also like to express our appreciation to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting the incorporation of literature on suzhi. Correspondence to: Dr. Brenda L. Berkelaar, The University of Texas at Austin, Department of Communication Studies, 1 University Station A1105, Austin, TX 78712-0115, USA. E-mail: b.berkelaar@austin.utexas.edu ISSN 0363-7751 (print)/ISSN 1479-5787 (online) # 2012 National Communication Association http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03637751.2011.646490 Communication Monographs Vol. 79, No. 1, March 2012, pp. 93114 Downloaded by [Purdue University] at 19:34 06 March 2015