IKEA ILLUSION: The Dwelling Practice of Urban Youth in Flux

As the development of economy and urbanization, the lifestyle focusing on dwelling has become an ideology in Chinese mainland since 1970s .Urbanization has brought a plenty of population flow, the young people who enter into cities to live by taking higher education is a part of the population flow. Confronting with the huge gap between housing price and their income, and their working fluids, they have to dwell in flux How the dwelling ideology affects the young people has become an important issue in the research of ideology. This dissertation focus on IKEA and dwelling practice of the youth in flux.

Title： IKEA ILLUSION: The Dwelling Practice of Urban Youth in Flux

( 宜家幻象：流动中的城市青年居家实践)

Author: 

ZHENG Yue ( 郑月 ) 

Master 2016 Thesis

Abstract:  

As the development of economy and urbanization, the lifestyle focusing on dwelling has become an ideology in Chinese mainland since 1970s. Urbanization has brought a plenty of population flow, the young people who enter into cities to live by taking higher education is a part of the population flow. Confronting with the huge gap between housing price and their income, and their working fluids, they have to dwell in flux. How the dwelling ideology affects the young people has become an important issue in the research of ideology. This dissertation focus on IKEA and dwelling practice of the youth in flux.

This dissertation points out that IKEA contracts a dwelling model accepted by the youth by its low price, convenience, and the setting of labor and role in family and society. IKEA provides an image of dwelling and practice spaces. IKEA articulates the dwelling problem of the youth in flux and dwelling ideology. It is the solutions that IKEA provides that makes the youth in flux still have imagination of ideal dwelling life. The image that IKEA constructs is just an illusion, IKEA does not improve the dwelling problem of urban youth radically, on the contrary, it deepens the dominant ideology of the society.