Performing identities: Women in rural–urban migration in contemporary China

Abstract

This paper is centred on the process of identity and belonging negotiation of rural women in their migration to urban employment in contemporary China. Employing a unique mobile method, the author follows rural women’s migration by gathering data from both sending and receiving areas, and captures the dynamic and situated, fluid nature of rural migrant women’s identity deconstruction and reconstruction processes. The study reveals that rural migrant women readily depart from peasant identity, rejecting the identity of ‘dagongmei’, and at the same time draw up boundaries against other rural migrants in different contexts. The boundaries they draw, however, are not static, but are fluid and ever changing in different circumstances and contexts. Paradoxically, such boundaries serve to reinforce the differentiation among rural migrant women and undermine their solidarity.

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