科研之友
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摘要
Based on qualitative data collected from interviews and observation in both sending and receiving areas, this study examines the rural-to-urban migration of married women in contemporary China. Bringing motherhood into the analysis, we found that having children plays an ambiguous and even contradictory role in women's migration decisions. On the one hand, it may confine women's mobility inasmuch as they are still expected to act as primary caregivers in the rural household; on the other hand, motherhood may facilitate women leaving their natal communities for urban employment, especially if such decisions are seen in connection with the costs of their children's education. Owing both to chronic labor shortages and to their perceived docility and relative disposability, married women have been recruited in great numbers in recent years, especially into the garment factories of China's mushrooming coastal cities. Yet because of barriers to family resettlement-the oppressive "household registration" or hukou system-most of the women in this study migrated alone or with their husbands, leaving their children behind in the care of grandparents, or in even less stable arrangements. That this geographic separation between childrearing and work creates a profound dilemma for these women, requiring them to alter both their mothering practices and their identities as maternal caregivers, is the central focus of the analysis. In this connection, divided motherhood in China can usefully be compared and contrasted with the phenomenon of transnational motherhood happening in other migration contexts around the globe.
- 出版日期2015
- 单位广东外语外贸大学
