Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-grxwn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-12T22:53:15.411Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Migrant Girls in Shenzhen: Gender, Education and the Urbanization of Aspiration*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 May 2015

Charlotte Goodburn
Charlotte Goodburn*
Affiliation:
Lau China Institute, King's College London, London. Email: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of rural–urban migration on primary school-age migrant girls in China, providing important data on this unexplored group as well as drawing several larger conclusions about the evolving relationship between migration and women's autonomy. Much recent literature has focused on Chinese young unmarried women migrants. However, there has been no attempt to distinguish the effect of migration on children by gender, and little research on the “new generation” of married women migrants. This paper focuses on two aspects of migrant girls' well-being, education and migration satisfaction, and compares girls' assessments with those of their parents, particularly their mothers. It analyses differences between the views of both girls and parents, arguing that specific parental concerns about daughters shape girls' futures in ways that do not apply to migrant boys. A further, broader, implication of this analysis is that certain benefits of migration, previously thought to apply exclusively to single women, extend also to married women, influencing mothers when forming goals for their daughters' futures.

摘要

本文探讨中国农民工从农村移居城市务工对小学学龄女童的影响, 本文依据所收集的有关该群体的数据, 试图解释移居城市和妇女自主权之间的关系演变。目前, 大部分研究文献都专注于未婚的年轻女性农民工, 然而迄今为止, 有关城市移民对儿童在性别上的影响的研究, 及对 “新一代” 已婚的女性农民工的影响的研究, 却仍是无人涉足。本文着重在教育和移民满意度两个方面对农民工女性子女福祉进行研究, 并将这些女性子女和他们的父母, 特别是他们的母亲作比较。本文亦分析了这些女性子女和他们的父母对待问题的不同看法, 强调父母在对待女孩与对待男孩的态度上的不同; 在对待女孩问题上, 对某些问题的特别关注是影响其女性子女的主要因素。广言之, 本研究说明以前认为移居城市给单身女性带来的益处, 也适用于已婚女性, 并影响着母亲在为他们的女儿选择未来发展目标。

Keywords

migrant childrengendermigrant girlseducationwell-beingChina农民工子女性别问题农民工女童教育福利中国
Type
Articles
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 222 , June 2015 , pp. 320 - 338
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I am grateful for the valuable feedback given by Stephen John and the comments and suggestions of the anonymous reviewers.

References

All-China Women's Federation. 2013. “Chengxiang liudong ertong zhuangkuang yanjiu baogao, woguo nongcun liushou ertong” (Research report on the situation of China's rural–urban migrant children and left behind children), 10 May, http://www.women.org.cn/allnews/02/3906.html. Accessed 19 August 2013.Google Scholar
Anagnost, Ann. 2004. “The corporeal politics of quality (suzhi).” Public Culture 16(2), 189–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bhachu, Parminder. 1993. “Twice and direct migrant Sikhs: caste, class and identity in pre- and post-1984 Britain.” In Westwood, Sallie and Bhachu, Parminder (eds.), Enterprising Women: Ethnicity, Economy and Gender Relations. London: Routledge, 76–102.Google Scholar
Chen, Yuanyuan, and Feng, Shuaizhang. 2013. “Access to public schools and the education of migrant children in China.” China Economic Review 26, 75–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Das Gupta, Monica, Lee, Sunhwa, Uberoi, Patricia, Wang, Danning, Wang, Lihong and Zhang, Xiaodan. 2000. “State policies and women's autonomy in China, India, and the Republic of Korea, 1950–2000.” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 2497.Google Scholar
Davin, Delia. 1997. “Migration, women and gender issues in contemporary China.” Working Papers on Chinese Politics, Economy and Society No. 9. Cologne China Studies Online, http://www.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/fileadmin/chinastudien/papers/No_1997-9.pdf.Google Scholar
Davin, Delia. 2005. “Women and migration in contemporary China.” China Report 41(1), 29–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fan, C. Cindy. 2003. “Rural–urban migration and gender division of labor in transitional China.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 27(1), 24–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodburn, Charlotte. 2009. “Learning from migrant education: a case study of the schooling of rural migrant children in Beijing.” International Journal of Educational Development 29(5), 495–504.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hannum, Emily. 2005. “Market transition, educational disparities, and family strategies in rural China.” Demography 42(2), 275–299.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jacka, Tamara. 2005. Rural Women in Urban China: Gender, Migration, and Social Change. New York: ME Sharpe.Google Scholar
Ji, Jianlin, Kleinman, Arthur and Becker, Anne E.. 2001. “Suicide in contemporary China: a review of China's distinctive suicide demographics in their sociocultural context.” Harvard Review of Psychiatry 9(1), 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kwong, Julia. 2004. “Educating migrant children: negotiations between the state and civil society.” The China Quarterly 180, 1073–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liang, Zai, Guo, Lin and Duan, Charles Chengrong. 2008. “Migration and the well-being of children in China.” Yale-China Health Journal 5, 25–46.Google Scholar
Magnani, Elisabetta, and Zhu, Rong. 2012. “Gender wage differentials among rural–urban migrants in China.” Regional Science and Urban Economics 42(5), 779–793.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Murphy, Rachel. 2002. How Migrant Labour is Changing Rural China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ngai, Pun. 1999. “Becoming dagongmei (working girls): the politics of identity and difference in reform China.” The China Journal 42, 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pessar, Patricia. 1984. “The linkage between the household and workplace in the experience of Dominican immigrant women in the United States.” International Migration Review 18, 1188–1211.Google Scholar
Ui, Shiori. 1991. “‘Unlikely heroes’: the evolution of female leadership in a Cambodian ethnic enclave.” In Buroway, Michael (ed.), Ethnography Unbound: Power and Resistance in the Modern Metropolis. Berkeley: University of California Press, 161–177.Google Scholar
Wang, Lu. 2008. “The marginality of migrant children in the urban Chinese educational system.” British Journal of Sociology of Education 29(6), 691–703.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yan, Hairong. 2008. New Masters, New Servants: Development, Migration, and Women Workers. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Zhang, Heather. 1997. “Making a difference in their own lives: rural women in the urban labour market in north China.” Leeds East Asian Papers No. 50.Google Scholar
Zhang, Li. 2001. Strangers in the City: Reconfigurations of Space, Power and the Social Networks with China's Floating Population. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar