This study investigates how broadband internet affects rural–urban migration in China using the Universal Broadband and Telecommunication Services pilot program launched in 2015 as a quasi‐experimental setting. Analyzing China Household Finance Survey data (2013–2021) with difference‐in‐differences estimation, we find that improved internet access significantly increased rural–urban migration by 3.2–3.4 percentage points, representing a 17.5–18.6 percent rise over the baseline migration rates of 18.3 percent. Effects were strongest in villages with fewer initial migrants, closer to county centers, and with better road infrastructure. At the individual level, impacts were largest among women, younger individuals, the more educated, and those from higher income households. The mechanism appears to be increased access to economic information. Our findings suggest broadband creates “digital routes” that facilitate out‐migration rather than “digital roots” that anchor residents to rural areas.

The phenomena going under the label of “work-life balance” (WLB) are crucial for understanding not only major pressures weighing on people’s well-being and choices but also the very organization and negotiation of everyday life. Despite being heavily researched, however, WLB is surprisingly undertheorized within sociology. This article attempts to redress the situation by proposing a robust and multilayered sociological model capable of explaining its genesis, experience, and variations. I first deconstruct the commonsense notion of WLB, recasting it as a family-employment-leisure nexus, and specify its elements. Next, I flag the limits of current conceptualizations of WLB and turn to Bourdieu’s field theory for solutions. I go beyond Bourdieu, however, by modeling more precisely how multiple fields interact to shape the demands, dispositions, and desires of everyday experience. I develop a series of concepts and distinctions to that end and finish with a sketch of research possibilities.

This article explores the origins and implications of a new cloud business model that is powering the advance of AI. We document how this model emerged within a handful of the most dominant IT firms whose reach into all corners of the economy makes them a powerful node or “choke point” in the political economy as a whole. We then elaborate how the features of the cloud business model differ from the traditional platform model out of which it grew, as it evolved from asset-light to asset-heavy, from hierarchical organization to semivertical integration, from domination over to collaboration with partner firms, and from embracing consumer- to enterprise-facing strategies. A final section considers the technological, political, and distributional impacts of the rise of this new business model—showing how the current race to artificial general intelligence (AGI) has reinforced and accelerated its underlying dynamics (above all, intensifying the drive for scale and ever-greater asset intensity), analyzing the new techno-nationalist alliance between industry leaders and the state that the model's development has inspired, and considering the new power-distributional dynamics this model has produced.