Zhang, Nana (2011) Negotiating identities : women in rural-urban migration in contemporary China. In: Gender, Subjectivity and Oral History Conference, University of Warwick, Coventry, 24 Nov 2011 (Unpublished)

Abstract

This paper focuses on the dynamics of identity and belonging negotiation of rural women in their migration for urban employment in contemporary China. Based on in-depth interviews with women migrants, their families, friends, colleagues and fellow villagers from both sending and receiving areas, the study investigate how rural women actively negotiate their identities in accordance with their migration experiences and the impact of gender on the shaping and performing their identities in their migration process. The research shows that rural migrant women do not assume the dominant identity labels such as ‘women peasant worker’ assigned to them; instead, they negotiate a series of identities in different contexts and draw boundaries to include and exclude others, creating different meanings of 'Self' and 'Other' throughout their migration project. Rural migrant women discard their identity as a peasant, identify themselves as different from the peasant women in their home villages, drawing lines between themselves and urbanites while, at the same time, constructing boundaries to exclude/include other rural migrants.

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