In the last three decades, China has seen the world's largest urban–rural migration. In 2012, it was estimated that there were over 260 million rural migrants in China's cities and that more than half of China's population now lives in urban areas, compared with just a fifth in the 1980s.Footnote 1 Most rural migrants do not possess an urban household registration (hukou 户口) and are thus excluded from full access to many state goods and services in their urban area of residence. This is as true of the so-called “new generation” of migrant workers, born since the 1980s, as it was of the previous generation. What is different is that the new generation contains a much larger proportion of women migrants, including many married women who migrate with their husbands, and a large number of migrant children who accompany parents to the city.Footnote 2 According to a 2011 survey by the All-China Women's Federation, over half of new generation migrant workers are women.Footnote 3 For rural families, sole migration of the husband to urban areas for work is increasingly giving way to couple migration and household migration.Footnote 4 The same survey estimates that there are now 35.8 million migrant children in China's cities, up from 25.5 million in 2005.Footnote 5 Around 20 million of these are thought to be between six and 14 years old, and are entitled to receive free compulsory education.Footnote 6
Despite the shift in migration patterns, there has been surprisingly little work done on the impact of migrating on married women in China, especially compared with the large body of literature on unmarried women migrants in the 16–25 age bracket. Empirical studies of this latter group strongly suggest that, despite challenges and discrimination in urban China, migration promotes women's autonomy. Separation from older family members and the influence of urban culture create different expectations of women's familial and social roles.Footnote 7 Young women feel more confident and self-aware as a result of migration.Footnote 8 Many negotiate greater autonomy within their families, marry later than non-migrants, and acquire savings and other personal property which increase their social status.Footnote 9 In fact, some young women migrate specifically in order to gain independence and to try to avoid marriage into agricultural households with strong patriarchal attitudes.Footnote 10
In comparison, the little existing work on new generation married women migrants suggests a much less positive outcome. Unlike single women, married women are not able to re-negotiate familial gender relations as a result of migration. Instead, they face severe disadvantages in the urban labour force and are subject to continued restrictive gender roles within the household.Footnote 11 However, whether this is changing as a result of continued and increasing household migration during the late 2000s is unknown. Similarly, despite a growing interest in the impact of migration on children, there has been very little research specifically on migrant girls. It is unclear whether girls who migrate with their families benefit in the same way as young unmarried women migrating alone, or whether possible negative consequences, such as those which are claimed to affect married women migrating with households, outweigh the potential gains. Despite increases in the numbers of rural migrant children in China's cities, research on their experiences remains both limited and “gender-blind.”
This article primarily examines the impact of rural–urban migration on migrant girls, but also provides important insights into the relationship between migration and gender from the perspective of migrant mothers, suggesting that the picture for these married women may not be as bleak as previously thought. It is based on analysis of interviews I conducted with migrant parents and children in Shenzhen city in 2008–2009. The following section outlines my research methods. The article then examines the impact of migration on girls' education, and suggests how this may differ from the effects on boys' schooling. The fourth part focuses on girls' own perceptions of their well-being after migration, comparing this with parents' ideas about the well-being of their daughters, and identifies two perceived benefits of urban life for girls beyond formal schooling, the first of which relates to concepts of a daughter's “quality.” The second benefit, which relates to “urban skills,” is then analysed further in the fifth section, which examines mothers' perceptions of the advantages of urban life for young girls, and suggests that married women benefit from migration in several important ways. Mothers are keen to pass these benefits on to their daughters and have very urban aspirations for the futures of their girls. However, my conclusion suggests a more complex picture: although parents view the city as providing great benefits to daughters, the problems migrant girls face in accessing a decent education in urban China may make it difficult for them to realize their parents' ambitions.
Research Methods
Shenzhen has the largest number of rural–urban migrants of any Chinese city.Footnote 12 Since becoming China's first special economic zone (SEZ) in 1980, it has become a major manufacturing centre in southern China, with a population of approximately 14 million – of whom only around two million have a Shenzhen hukou. Most rural migrants, and particularly the younger, new generation migrants, work in factories, although many, including those who have migrated as a household, also engage in informal sector small businesses such as market vending. The number of migrant children in Shenzhen is unknown, but it is at least 543,000 according to local government figures.Footnote 13
Interviews with 92 migrant parents (63 mothers and 29 fathers) and 66 children (41 girls and 25 boys) were conducted within the Shenzhen SEZ between May 2008 and January 2009. Index children of parents interviewed and the separate (mostly unrelated) group of children interviewed were all aged between six and 12 years old, both at the time of migration and at interview, and had migrated not more than five years earlier. Interviews focused on education before and after migration, and on the preferences of both the children and parents as to whether the city or the village was the best place for the child to live.
Most informants were found through door-to-door interviewing in migrant communities, but I also visited factories and other workplaces and occasionally migrants introduced me to other informants. Parents came from 12 Chinese provinces and were drawn from eight Shenzhen fieldwork sites, so although the sample is not random, I anticipate that the data is broadly representative for the purposes of comparing children's education and well-being by gender. My sample of children is less representative, especially of school experiences, since most children were identified from within the four migrant schools where I taught English language.
Because of difficulties in gaining “informed consent” from such young children, I asked if children were happy to talk and explained that they could stop at any point or not answer any question. I was alert to non-verbal signs that indicated that the child did not want to continue and did not pursue any purposefully evasive answers, but I found most children were keen to talk. In fact, it was difficult to turn away many children who wanted to participate but who did not fit my criteria, so I asked a few token questions of many “unsuitable” children. All interviews were conducted in Mandarin. The names of informants used here are pseudonyms, since much of the information was sensitive or potentially compromising.
My interview data faces the limitation that informants' memories may not have been entirely accurate. This is a particular problem for pre-migration details, since interviewees, including children, had to recall details from up to five years previously. A larger issue is the difficulty of generalizing from these case studies. While the material illuminates some of the long- and short-term impacts of migration to Shenzhen, whether it can provide larger generalizations about China is much less clear. Furthermore, the small sample of migrant families means that many conclusions, even about Shenzhen, can be only tentative.
Migration, Schooling and the Gender Difference
Much literature, in both English and Chinese, has examined the educational problems of migrant children. Until 1993, migrants were barred from enrolling in urban state schools and, even after they were officially allowed entry, high legal and extra-legal fees prevented most from receiving a state education.Footnote 14 Since the nationwide abolition of all tuition fees in 2008, migrant children, like all children, are entitled to receive nine years of compulsory education free of charge. However, many city governments lack the incentives and financial resources to accommodate migrant children. A significant proportion therefore continues to be excluded from the state education system and enrolled in private, usually unlicensed, migrant schools.
Whereas certain other large Chinese cities, notably Shanghai, have undertaken campaigns to incorporate migrant children into state schools and to license official migrant schools, these have been lacking in Shenzhen. Although official statistics claimed that around 60 per cent of migrant children in Shenzhen attended state schools in 2002, this figure included only migrant households officially registered with a temporary residence certificate and is therefore likely to exclude most migrant children.Footnote 15 In fact, only migrant children formally registered with the local education department are eligible to enter Shenzhen's state schools.Footnote 16 The conditions for registration in 2008–2009 included the provision of six official documents, known as the wu jia yi 五加一 (five certificates and one proof). These were: hukou and temporary residence certificate; family planning certificate; school transfer letter; birth certificate; social insurance certificates of both parents; and property deed or officially stamped rental contract. Very few migrant parents had all of these documents, so the majority of migrant children were unable to attend state schools.
Enrolment
Few children were not enrolled in school at all. Only four of the 92 parents I interviewed reported that their child did not attend either state or migrant school, of which three were girls described as “too young,” although aged eight or nine at the time of interview.Footnote 17 As my interviews focused only on children aged over six years, I cannot report accurately when younger migrant children began school in Shenzhen, but many younger sisters of index children were not enrolled in school despite being over six years of age. Delayed enrolment in school had already been more common for girls than boys before migration, with 65 per cent of boys having started school aged six or less, compared with 45 per cent of girls, and migration seemed to have exacerbated this. Delayed enrolment may be related to the high costs of schooling in the city. While state schools have not charged tuition and textbook fees since 2008 for those able to enrol, the private schools attended by most migrant children charged a mean monthly fee of 295 yuan – a significant burden to most migrant parents.Footnote 18
The case of a ten-year-old girl from rural northern Guangdong was typical. Ceoncau migrated to Shenzhen when she was five years old, but did not attend school until she was nine. She had three older siblings and her family could not afford to educate her until her eldest sister had finished school. Ceoncau was now struggling academically and socially in the second year of a local migrant school among classmates two to three years younger than herself. Many parents had similar stories, and although the costs of schooling could delay enrolment of younger boys, it was more common for girls. In some cases, even girls with enrolled younger brothers were not at school. One Guangdong father of two sons (aged seven and 11) and a daughter (aged eight), commented:
School fees in Shenzhen are extremely expensive. If we had a lot of money, of course we would send all our children to school now. But our sons go to school, and that is what is most important. The little girl will go to school a bit later – when we have earned more money!
Type of school
Migration not only affected age at enrolment, but also the type of school attended. Before migration, almost all parents said that their child had attended state school.Footnote 19 After migration, however, 78 per cent attended unofficial private schools, with only 17 per cent in state schools. A smaller proportion of girls (14 per cent) attended state school than boys (22 per cent). This was not statistically significant (unsurprising, given the small number of children attending state school), but it is nonetheless interesting. Parent interviews suggested several important reasons why girls were less likely to be enrolled in state schools.
The first was that male births were more often officially registered, so more boys were able to provide the essential birth certificate and hukou in order to enter state school. Since rural family planning quotas allow couples a second child if their first is a girl, and since registration of out-of-plan births involves a large fine, many higher order female births were not officially registered. Furthermore, I found that even some elder and second daughters were unregistered so that the family could “try again” for at least one son. Moreover, even if boys were born out-of-plan, they were more frequently registered than girls because many parents of younger sons thought the fine was worth paying to include boys on the family hukou. The bureaucratic restrictions on state school entry therefore had a disproportionate effect on girls.
Another reason for the lower enrolment of migrant girls in state schools was that some parents saw the education of their sons as more important and they therefore made more effort to acquire documents, undertake admissions procedures, purchase equipment and pay for transport to send their boys to state schools, which were often far from migrant communities. During my home visits to students from migrant schools, some parents focused the discussion exclusively on their son's education, even if I taught their daughter and not their son. However, as Hannum has noted for rural China, the emphasis on the schooling of boys over that of girls was less pronounced in single-child families, perhaps because there are more resources available to invest in the child's schooling, or because these parents would be dependent on their child in old age, regardless of sex.Footnote 20
The fact that migrant children, and especially girls, attend migrant schools rather than state schools is relevant when assessing the impact of migration because of the large difference in the standards of the education received. Research in other Chinese cities has demonstrated the inferiority of migrant schools compared with state schools, and Shenzhen is no exception.Footnote 21 Migrant parents in Shenzhen were well aware of the disparity in educational quality and even many children knew that local state schools were much better equipped. There were common complaints about poorly trained teachers, substandard facilities, overcrowding and bad discipline. Furthermore, not only were migrant schools perceived as worse than the state schools in Shenzhen, but they were also seen as worse than the rural state schools the children had previously attended. Only 24 per cent of parents whose children attended private school thought that the city school was better than the school in the home village, and even many parents who described the village school as bad thought it preferable to the migrant school.
The children's answers were similar. Only 10 per cent of those attending a migrant school thought that their teachers were good. Several spoke of problems with discipline and violence, and I witnessed many violent incidents in the schools. One seven-year-old girl told me that she cried every day when walking to school because older children would hit her and steal her belongings. Another girl reported that some children were always bullied and that even the teacher was afraid to speak to them since the older boys would then bully the teacher. No child said he/she had been afraid in the village school.
The perceived superiority of rural schooling was such that some parents planned to send their children, particularly the boys, back to the village to be educated: 28 per cent of boys and 9 per cent of girls were to be sent back within two years. Most of these were children aged between ten and 12 who would begin junior-middle school in the countryside. Not only quality but also length of schooling was a problem for migrant children, since although migrant junior-middle schools were available in Shenzhen, few migrant senior-middle schools existed. Parents who wanted their child to stay at school after the compulsory education period would usually send him or her back to the village. Since few parents themselves planned to return, children would live with grandparents. Given the poor quality of migrant schools and the lack of higher level schooling, it may seem surprising that more parents did not plan to send their child home to be educated. The following section analyses the reasons for this, and the gender difference.
Overall, the effect of migration on girls' school attendance is small, although it may delay enrolment for some which then causes problems later on. The effect on the quality of schooling received is much more serious. Although both sexes struggle to enter higher quality state schools after migration, girls face more obstacles than boys, particularly if they come from large families. Girls overwhelmingly attend private migrant schools, where the education is worse (and is recognized as such by both parents and children) than in state schools in both the city and the home villages. It seems plausible, then, that while the education of both boys and girls suffers after migration, girls do worse educationally than boys.
Migration, Girls' Well-being and “Outside-School Education”
Given the greater obstacles girls face in gaining access to decent quality state schools, it is probably not surprising that fewer migrant girls than boys expressed satisfaction with life in the city. What is surprising is that a greater proportion of parents of girls, compared with parents of boys, said that the city was the better place for their child to live. This section discusses the preferences of boys and girls with regards to life in the city or the village, examines how and why the views of children and parents about the well-being of girls differ, and analyses the reasons why parents, particularly mothers, want their daughters to remain in Shenzhen despite the negative educational consequences. In analysing these complex and apparently contradictory findings, I show that close study of the attitudes of migrant girls and their parents leads to novel conclusions about the impact of migration on married women and the broader relationship between migration, gender, and urban versus rural life in contemporary China.
Neither boys nor girls preferred the village overall, but a much smaller proportion of girls than boys said that they preferred to live in the city (Table 1). Satisfaction with city life did not increase with time spent there – in fact, preference for the village was more common among the girls who had been in Shenzhen longer, whereas for boys, time spent in Shenzhen made no difference. Questions about where the child was happier produced similar answers, with 84 per cent of boys (but only 59 per cent of girls) happier in the city. By contrast, the view that Shenzhen was the better place for their child was significantly stronger among parents whose index child was a girl.Footnote 22 This opinion was strongest of all among mothers of girls.
Table 1: “Which Place is Better for Children to Live Now?” Parent and Child Answers
Source:
Interview data.
Why do the views of parents and children diverge? And how can parents' views of Shenzhen being a better environment than the village for girls be reconciled with the damning accounts many gave of the quality of the education received by their daughters in the city? I argue that it is not simply that parents see education as unimportant for girls and thus the negative impact of migration on their schooling is therefore thought to be less significant; instead, I suggest that parents have particular concerns about their daughters' futures and the perceptions mothers have of the benefits they themselves have received as a result of migration influence them in valuing other aspects of urban life for girls above and beyond formal education. This in turn leads to a broader understanding of migrant perceptions of the role of women and girls in rural and urban China.
While some parents, especially in large families, expressed more interest in their sons' education, none said that educating daughters was pointless, and even those whose daughters were not enrolled in school acknowledged the importance of education for girls. Many parents were very concerned about the quality of education their children received. Even those whose working hours precluded attending school meetings or whose lack of education prevented them from assisting with schoolwork seemed concerned with their child's school performance. Many punished their child if he or she did not study diligently, and most made substantial sacrifices in order to pay school fees. It therefore seems odd that parents overwhelmingly viewed Shenzhen as a better place than the village for their daughters to live, despite the fact that the schools most of their children (and particularly the girls) attended were deemed to be inferior.
The activities (huodong 活动) and lifestyle (shenghuo 生活) available to girls in the city were felt by most parents to be far better than those available in the village. In particular, seeing tall buildings, cars and luxury shopping malls were mentioned by many as examples of the city “lifestyle,” along with the amenities more commonly used by migrant families such as supermarkets, buses, street lights and paved roads. While parents also discussed sons' urban activities, this aspect of city life seemed far more important for daughters. Sons benefited from other advantages of living in the city, for example the family had more disposable income, the accommodation was superior or the natural environment was better; these aspects were not mentioned at all for girls. Girls themselves also favoured the activities and lifestyle in Shenzhen over those in the village, describing Shenzhen as “much more fun” (haowan duo le 好玩多了), “modern” (xiandai 现代) and “developed” (fada 发达). They also referred to cars, malls and tall buildings, even though none had entered a mall or skyscraper and most had not been in a car. The answer given by one ten-year-old from Jiangxi is representative: “Here there are many things to do and see. There are big shops and cars … there are many new places to visit. It is fun. In the village there are only fields.”
However, unlike the parents, whose views of the city as an environment for daughters were, other than in the area of education, overwhelmingly positive, many girls spoke of problems experienced in the city. As other studies have indicated, children of both sexes experience loneliness and discrimination after migrating.Footnote 23 Some of my interviewees reported being hit or having belongings stolen by more established migrant children who bullied newcomers. Many missed the companionship in the village. An 11-year-old girl from Jiangxi explained:
I am lonely. My parents work hard all day and don't have time to take care of me. They come home when I am already asleep … I can eat more food here but I am often by myself. I miss my grandmother in my home village. I have few friends in school here. My friends are all in the village.
Although parents were mostly aware that their children experienced loneliness and discrimination in Shenzhen, many perceived this as part of the more general problem of the low quality of migrant schools, and parents of daughters in particular emphasized that the positive aspects of city life outweighed these “educational” disadvantages. When I asked what children gained from the new activities and lifestyle, parents repeatedly mentioned skills (jineng 技能 or nengli 能力), knowledge (zhishi 知识) and “self-development” (ziwo fazhan 自我发展). Self-development was particularly targeted at girls: only one parent of a boy mentioned self-development, compared with 16 parents of girls. Examples of skills included the ability to take a Shenzhen city bus, buy food in supermarkets, talk to unfamiliar adults, speak more standard Mandarin and use a computer. The concept of self-development was more nebulous but included, for many, gaining self-confidence and an awareness of “modern life” (xiandai shenghuo 现代生活). Some parents explained explicitly why these concerns were relevant for girls in particular. A Hunanese mother named Gu told me:
Especially for a girl, increasing [her] quality (suzhi 素质) is very important, especially if she looks for a job here … In our village there are no activities of this kind. There is nothing to do, only farm work. It is very backward. For a girl, it is very hard to develop one's self in the village. She will become a housewife. If she does not go out [migrate], her experiences will be very limited.
Most parents stressed that the skills daughters developed in Shenzhen made up for the low quality of their education; indeed, learning such skills could also be construed as a type of education. Liu, a mother from Guangxi, expressed this directly:
Living here is also a kind of education. There is in-school education, and outside-school education … in Shenzhen children can learn many things outside school. Parents perhaps think this is more important than education in school … If they enter the factory they will certainly be chosen over workers [who have just come] from the countryside. They will certainly be treated better. At that time, they will not be peasants … they will be city people (chengshi ren 城市人).
Liu's explanation reflects two related ideas about the importance of the city, one instrumental and one more intrinsic. The instrumental concern is that the value of schooling lies in skills acquired, and that more useful skills may be learnt outside of formal education. The other concern is that being a “city person” is intrinsically preferable to being a “peasant,” and that a child who grows up in Shenzhen will, through the acquisition of urban habits, values and ideas, become essentially better than those left behind in the village. Of course, these two concerns have considerable overlap, since part of the reason that it is preferable to be a “city person” is because they receive better treatment, but there also seems to be an endorsement of the underlying value judgment about the relative worth of urbanites and peasants. This opinion may be shaped by experiences of discrimination upon arrival in the city, since some parents, particularly mothers, had themselves been called derogatory names, both by urbanites and less recent migrants. Country girls (xiangxiamei 乡下妹), little nannies (xiaobaomu 小保姆) and fishing girls (laomei 捞妹) were common terms of abuse for migrant women in Shenzhen, while men were labelled country bumpkins (xiangbalao 乡巴佬). However, judgments of peasant backwardness were also influenced by the penetration of state developmental discourses into rural China. In some cases, these had actually influenced migration decisions: the desire to experience the “modern” city was given as a motivation for migration by several parents, and even those who expressed nostalgia for their rural home described the countryside as backward.
There was a noticeable gender difference in the way that parents related these concepts to their children. In addition to Gu above, three other parents referred to their daughters' suzhi as needing improvement or having been improved by migration, whereas none discussed the “quality” of their sons. The use of the language of suzhi and self-development almost exclusively for daughters mirrors the official state and media depiction of rural women as occupying the lowest rung of the suzhi hierarchy, and suggests that migrants have themselves deeply internalized the idea of uncivilized “country girls.”Footnote 24 The apparently contradictory emphasis parents put on the advantages of city life for daughters can therefore be seen to stem partly from a concern with the “quality” of their daughters: the increased opportunity for girls to gain suzhi is an important aspect of their being in the city. As one mother expressed it:
For a young girl, the city is much better … I want my daughter to express herself like a city person, not an outsider. I don't want her to be a peasant. I don't want her to have the problems I have. I won't let my daughter have this inferior status (lieshi diwei 劣势地位).
A second, more concrete, source of parents' views that the city is better for girls, despite the lower standard of education they receive, relates to Liu's instrumental concern, that more useful, practical skills can be learnt in the city than in the countryside. The reason for the gender difference here was clear: a statistically significantly greater proportion of parents of girls than parents of boys hoped that their child would settle in the city for the long term, where these skills would be needed.Footnote 25 The previous section noted that many more boys than girls would be sent back to the village for their education. The difference was even more pronounced when parents were asked where they would like their child to settle in the long term: 76 per cent of parents wanted their daughter to settle in the city, compared with only 56 per cent who wanted their son to do so. Few hoped their child would settle in the village, but 33 per cent did not mind where their son settled, compared with only 15 per cent for a daughter. The desire was most common in mothers of girls: 25 out of 28 mothers of daughters wanted their daughter to settle in the city. In order to settle in the city as adults, daughters would need to gain not just a higher suzhi, but also actual, practical urban life skills. Learning to take a bus, use a computer, shop for food, speak standard Mandarin, and so on, would be essential to obtaining urban employment and, perhaps, an urban marriage.
The Benefits of Women's Migration and the “Urbanization” of Maternal Aspirations
Why did parents, particularly mothers, want their daughters to remain in the city? In addition to the general reasons for children of both sexes to stay in the city (i.e. better employment prospects and better standards of living), three groups of reasons were put forward only for girls. These shed much light on not only aspirations for daughters but also on the advantages married women perceive themselves to have gained from migration, and their comparison of gender roles in rural and urban China.
The first reason was that parents felt that sex discrimination was less in the city than in rural China, where many people retained “backward” attitudes. One father from rural Chongqing summed this up with the optimistic statement that, in Shenzhen, “girls can do anything that boys can do.” This was not only a claim about comparatively more equal job prospects for young women in Shenzhen, but also about the treatment a woman could expect within her extended family. A Sichuanese mother explained that her own husband's parents held girls in low regard and it would be better for her daughter to marry into an urban family, which would not hold such attitudes:
Shenzhen people don't care if a child is a boy or a girl. People from our village still consider giving birth to a girl is inferior. When I gave birth to girls … my mother-in-law often showed her disappointment. I don't want my daughters to have this kind of experience.
This relates closely to the second reason. Parents thought it would be better for migrant girls to marry later, and at least to another migrant if not an urbanite. Several parents, including one father, complained about the early marriage practices back in their home villages, where girls could be engaged from as young as 13 years old. It was therefore widely hoped that daughters would marry away from the village. A few mothers wanted their daughters to marry urban men and gain an urban hukou. Others were more realistic about their daughters' chances of transferring registration status, but still did not want them to marry a rural husband. Many hoped that their daughters would marry another migrant, whose worldview would be broader than that of a village man and who would not oppose his wife's future migration. One mother from Sichuan explained:
She and a village man would not be alike. If he hasn't also been out [migrated], hasn't seen things for himself, he won't understand her experiences. Probably he wouldn't want her to go out again. In that way, she would become a village housewife and plant the fields.
The unwillingness of rural men to let wives re-migrate after marriage, in part to sustain the gender division of labour as a household strategy, has been examined in Fan's work on the relegation of married women to the village.Footnote 26 While the increasing number of married women among the new generation migrants in urban China suggests that this is changing, restrictions on future migration was still a concern to parents of girls. Interestingly, not only mothers but also two fathers I interviewed were keen to avoid this future for their daughters, suggesting perhaps some change in male attitudes as a result of migration.
These attitudes resemble those held by unmarried women migrants regarding their own marriages: dagongmei 打工妹 (working sisters) aim to marry either urban men, whose families will be more “modern” (less patriarchal) than rural in-laws, or at least other migrants, who will be more open to women's migration after marriage.Footnote 27 My interviewees, who were not single women but married migrants, wished to pass this potential benefit of migration on to their daughters. Marriage thus becomes a familial strategy to acquire social and spatial mobility, enabling young women to leave poor rural areas permanently or even, perhaps, to acquire formal urban citizenship. However, some parents were aware of possible problems. Wang, a mother from Anhui, reflected: “City men don't want to marry rural girls – only if they [the men] are old, or have physical defects, if they can't find city wives. This kind of unstable marriage will not be good for the girl.” Like other mothers, Wang hoped that her daughter would marry a migrant and live in the city, but could also see some possible disadvantages:
If she marries a man from a thousand miles away, she will have to stay in an unfamiliar place … for example, after having children. His family will not speak the same language. How will she communicate? She will be lonely … the customs will be different. They will have little in common. It is better to marry an Anhui man, or to stay here to have children and depend on her own family.
This highlights another aspect behind parents' wishes that their daughters might marry migrants in Shenzhen: a reduced dependence on in-laws and an increased closeness with the natal family. By remaining in the city, female migrants may still assume traditional gender roles as a mother and a wife but will do so much less as a daughter-in-law. A Hunanese woman, who had married a Shaanxi migrant in Shenzhen before relocating to her own village and re-migrating after the birth of her children, emphasized how little contact she had with her husband's parents. Her own parents, who lived closer to Shenzhen, had looked after her oldest daughter for two years. Several mothers described a similar pattern. In this regard, a daughter's marriage to a migrant man was regarded as having a positive effect in enhancing the importance of the wife's natal family and eroding traditional patrilineal kin relationships. This may be of particular relevance to those migrant families with only one child and who may therefore have to depend on a daughter for material and emotional support in old age.
The third reason for wanting daughters to settle in the city was that the girls could earn their own living. This was expressed only by mothers. While parents of both sexes mentioned better employment opportunities, only mothers spoke in terms of standing on one's own feet or supporting oneself (zili 自立). Many scholars, of both China and elsewhere, have pointed out that participation in paid labour results in increased autonomy for women after migration.Footnote 28 However, most of the research on this phenomenon in China focuses solely on young single women, many of whom cannot avoid returning to rural areas for marriage.Footnote 29 The little work that does exist on the experiences of married women suggests that they do not receive the same benefits. For example, Jacka emphasizes the disadvantages married women face when joining the labour force: it is difficult to find paid employment; what work is available is low status, badly paid and largely invisible; and there is little evidence that an independent income allows married women to renegotiate familial gender relations. In fact, Jacka claims that a married woman's position in the family might actually decline after migration, because of a higher level of domestic abuse.Footnote 30 This forms a strong contrast with the considerable gains enjoyed by single women who migrate.Footnote 31 However, only two of the married women Jacka interviewed in Beijing in 2001 were in independent waged employment. My interview data indicates that there may be similar positive effects for married women in paid labour, or at least that migrant women themselves now believe this to be the case, and that their perceptions of the advantages of migration influence their desires for an urban future for their daughters. It is therefore problematic to assume that married women do not do better as a result of migration, and I suggest that there may be a more complex interplay between gender, migration and autonomy than has previously been considered.
Under the household responsibility system in rural China, farm workers' income is usually measured at household level. Women's earnings are therefore an invisible component of the household economy.Footnote 32 This was true not only in terms of men's perceptions of their former rural lives, but also the perceptions of the women themselves. Several of the mothers I interviewed described themselves as “unemployed” before migration, but on further probing, I learnt that all were involved in farm work. By contrast, after migration only mothers caring for infants described themselves as unemployed. Although migrant women's wages are significantly lower than those of migrant men,Footnote 33 and although many mothers complained about working conditions, overtime and pressure in their Shenzhen employment, most seemed proud of their independent income and had aspirations for their daughters to earn a wage. A Hunanese mother who worked long hours, six days a week, as a street tailor spoke proudly of her contribution to the family's income. Other married women, including a factory worker, a cleaner and a street vendor, expressed satisfaction that they could earn their own wage. Despite the low social status of such work, these jobs were compared positively with having “nothing to do” in the village. One mother from Chongqing, referring to her daughter, put it succinctly: “I don't want her to go home. Here she can do what she wants – get a job, earn money, stand on her own feet. In the village she can't do anything at all.”
While some mothers, perhaps in households where there were many women to take care of household responsibilities and contribute to farming, may genuinely have been underemployed before migration, it is unlikely that many had “nothing to do.” This expression, which I heard frequently, seemed to be connected more to the sense of worthlessness the women attached to their rural labour, and suggests again that they themselves had internalized the idea that unpaid labour was much less valuable than waged work. However, it was not only independent wage labourers who were proud of their work after migration. Even some women who worked alongside their husbands running a family business emphasized their contribution to the household income in a way that none did when discussing pre-migration work.Footnote 34 One woman said specifically of the fish vending business she ran with her husband: “I do half, he does half. We are partners.” The fact that this mother also undertook the majority of childcare and household tasks, as well as working long hours, did not seem to reduce her satisfaction in their working arrangements. However, her ambition for her daughter was to find a fixed-hours position in a firm, which would be “less pressured” than running a family business.
I suggest, then, that for married women whose labour becomes more visible and therefore perceived as more valuable after migration, migrating means an increase in independence, and perhaps leads to greater authority in household decision-making and more control over family resources. In this case, it is not surprising that many wish to pass on these benefits to their daughters by encouraging them to remain in the city rather than return to rural China. However, as the example above shows, participation in the work force does not necessarily improve domestic equality. For some women, engaging in paid labour may actually increase their overall burden unless they find new alternatives to old roles, particularly those of childcare and housework. Therefore, while earning an independent wage may improve a woman's social status and autonomy, it may not necessarily change her relative position within the family.
Nonetheless, from the perspective of the women themselves, urban life brought significant advantages when compared with the lot of married women in rural China, and almost all migrant mothers therefore expressed the desire that their daughters would settle in the city for the long term. Girls were also deemed to be better off in the short term in the city, where they could acquire the skills they would need for their future urban lives – skills that they might not necessarily acquire in school. Alongside practical skills, girls more than boys were seen to need “self-development” and “high quality” in order to become modern citizens, marry a city man or at least another migrant, and earn an urban living.
In contrast, the girls' own answers reflected their current view of life in Shenzhen, and portrayed the impact on their well-being of loneliness, bullying and discrimination. However, it is interesting that, despite their answers about where they were happier now, 85 per cent of girls hoped to settle as an adult in the city – mirroring the answers of parents as to which place was better for girls. For many children, this related to urban career aspirations: girls dreamt of becoming city teachers, doctors, policewomen or beauticians. One spoke of becoming a “career woman” (nuqiangren 女强人 – literally “strong woman”), while others wanted to be an artist, scientist or computer programmer. These dreams are far beyond the reach of most, given the educational deprivation already experienced and the restricted access for migrants to senior high school in Shenzhen. Nonetheless, they demonstrate the “urbanization” of migrant girls' aspirations. Even the two girls who expressed happiness that they would be sent home to rural China to continue their education wished to work in the city when older. None aspired to rural work, and all expressed repugnance at the idea of farming.
Fangfang, a ten-year-old girl hoping to be a teacher, gave a typical answer: “Farming is dirty and boring, and the money is very little. Nobody wants to [do that].” Her 15-year-old sister wanted to help me understand. She confirmed Fangfang's impression of farm work, and added:
If I had to live there [in the village] and live like my grandmother, I would kill myself. Even death is better than that kind of life … to be a woman in the countryside is the worst [situation] of all.
Conclusion
The high female-to-male suicide ratio in rural China is typically thought to be linked to the traditional subordinate relationship of wives to husbands and husbands' families, as well as the heavy burden on women who work in the fields as well as undertaking household labour.Footnote 35 My analysis of the hopes expressed by parents – especially mothers – for their daughters suggests that, while women's burden of work in the city may not be much less, their subordinate status is subtly changed, at least societally if not necessarily within each household, with the increase in participation in paid labour and the distance from husbands' parents. I have argued, against the existing literature on the migration of married women, that these benefits extend to new generation married migrants in paid work as well as dagongmei. Parents, especially mothers, reflect this in their overwhelmingly urban ambitions for daughters. Their belief that the city is best for girls now, despite poorer schooling, reflects specific concerns about daughters' futures, in terms both of improving their essential “quality” and, more importantly, of equipping them with the skills necessary for future city life.
Neither of these concerns applies in the same way to migrant boys, who are not the focus of such strongly urban aspirations. Already seen as of intrinsically higher suzhi than rural women, men do not benefit as greatly from the instrumental value of urban life. Although they enjoy better employment prospects and standards of living in the cities, boys do not face sex discrimination, early marriage into patriarchal households, restrictions on future migration, the denigration of the contribution of their labour or the lack of an independent income if they choose to settle in the countryside. Rural life is therefore seen by migrant parents as, and – as rural suicide rates indicate – most likely actually is, much more tolerable for Chinese men.
Girls' own assessments turn far more on their current levels of well-being, taking into account their concerns with schooling and other issues in Shenzhen. That girls' satisfaction with city life is lower among those who have spent longer in Shenzhen suggests that these concerns may become stronger as time passes. Interestingly, their long-term aspirations are, like those of parents, strongly urban. Nonetheless, their chances of success may be limited. As shown above, migrant girls are denied the opportunity to gain a decent education, which would allow them to fulfil their dreams of becoming urban doctors or teachers. As China's economic development moves towards more skilled manufacturing, even factory work may begin to demand a level of education unavailable to migrant girls, many of whom have to drop out after junior-middle school. Furthermore, continued strict conditions for hukou status transfer prevent migrants from becoming official urban residents and further obstruct the ability of rural girls to attract urban husbands. These structural and institutional factors, as well as gender discrimination within and beyond the household, make it unlikely that migrant girls will be able to build the kinds of lives they hope for in urban areas. However, if they remain in the city, in line with the urban aspirations of their parents, they may be able to achieve a better, more independent life than that available to them in rural China.
