Author
Xiaodong
Lin works in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University, UK.
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Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (July 18, 2013)
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Publication Date: July 18, 2013
Rural-urban migration within China has transformed and
reshaped rural people’s lives during the past few decades, and has been one of
the most visible phenomena of the economic reforms enacted since the late
1970s. Whilst Feminist scholars have addressed rural women’s experience of
struggle and empowerment in urban China, in contrast, research on rural men’s
experience of migration is a neglected area of study. In response, this book
seeks to address the absence of male migrant workers as a gendered category within the
current literature on rural-urban migration.
Examining Chinese male migrant workers’ identity
formation, this book explores their experience of rural-urban migration and
their status as an emerging sector of a dislocated urban working class. It
seeks to understand issues of gender and class through the rural migrant men’s
narratives within the context of China’s modernization, and provides an in-depth
analysis of how these men make
sense of their new lives in the rapidly modernizing, post-Mao China with its
emphasis on progress and development.
Further, this book uses the men’s own narratives to challenge the
elite assumption that rural men’s low status is a result of their failure to
adopt a modern urban identity and lifestyle. Drawing on interviews with 28 male
rural migrants, Xiaodong Lin unpacks the gender politics of Chinese men and
masculinities, and in turn contributes to a greater understanding of global
masculinities in an international context.