Living alone in the city: Daily challenges, social support needs, and perceptions of social work intervention among urban solo-living youth in China
China’s rapid urbanization and large-scale internal migration have given rise to a growing population of solo-living youth—young adults who live alone in major cities, far from their families of origin. Despite the expanding size of this group, qualitative research exploring their lived experiences remains scarce, and the social work perspective has been largely absent from existing scholarship. This study employed semi-structured in-depth interviews with 20 empty-nest Chinese youth aged 23 to 34 in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Chengdu, analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis. Four themes emerged: (i) multilayered daily living challenges including housing insecurity and a pervasive sense of rootlessness shaped by institutional exclusion under the hukou system; (ii) systematic weakening of social support networks across family, peer, and community dimensions; (iii) emotional experiences characterized by concealed loneliness and unmet needs for emotional resonance; and (iv) a paradoxical pattern of high unfamiliarity with yet potential receptiveness toward social work services. Participants expressed strong expectations for low-threshold emotional support, peer mutual-aid networks, and youth-oriented community programs. Based on these findings, a multi-level social work intervention framework is proposed encompassing micro-level emotional support, meso-level peer network reconstruction, and macro-level policy advocacy. The findings contribute qualitative evidence for understanding empty-nest youth as a structurally produced demographic phenomenon and offer practice-oriented guidance for social work engagement with this emerging population.
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