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

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. 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an openaccess article under the CCBY license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/). Introduction indeed, exposed to the ‘vicissitudes of every day symbolic struggle’ Since the market oriented reforms of 1979, China has undergone rapid industrialization and urbanization. Accompanying these dramatic social and economic transformations is one of the world’s largest internal migrations, with an estimated 158 million people from rural areas have migrated to China’s urban centres searching for waged employment by 2011, of whom, around 36% are women (NBSC, 2012). In its search for ‘nimble fingers’ and ‘disposable labour’ (Elson and Pearson, 1981; Wright, 2006), global capital has created a new international division of labour, which has transformed China into a ‘world factory’ (Pun, 2005). Not only this, but it has made the sexual and class exploitation of women and the working population more mobile, more extensive, and more complex (Ong, 1991). Yet global capital has also opened up the possibility of new forms of power and politics, as well as new sites of resistance and action (Sassen, 2007). As argued by Silver, ‘. . .there is no reason to expect that just because capital finds it profitable to treat all workers as interchangeable equivalents, workers would themselves find it in their interest to accept this’ (Silver, 2003: 177). Despite their relatively new encounter with capitalism, Chinese rural women have been engaged in negotiating and contesting different subject positions in the migration process, like their counterparts in other parts of Asia and South America (Mills, 1997; Moore, 1994; Silvey and Elmhirst, 2003; Tiano, 1994). They are, (Bourdieu, 1997: 242). Taking employment in low-paid, gender specific jobs, mainly in the textile and manufacturing industries and the service sector (Davin, 1996; Fan, 2003; Gaetano, 2004; Lee, 1998; Pun, 1999; Solinger, 1999, 1995; Zhang, 2006), rural women migrants are said to ‘occupy a liminal position in space and time’ (Gaetano, 2008: 629). Some researchers suggest that rural migrant women are ‘the most oppressed’ (Au and Nan, 2007) and the ‘victims of exploitation’ under a triple oppression of ‘global capitalism, state socialism, and familial patriarchy... along lines of class, gender and rural–urban disparity’ (Pun, 2005: 4). In addition to the ‘official naming’ of rural migrant women by the state using terms such as ‘blind migrant’, ‘floating population’, ‘peasant workers’, the rhetoric of ‘maiden workers’, ‘dagongmei’ and ‘disposable labour’ also appears in recent research in the area (Gaetano, 2004; Pun, 2005; Wright, 2006; Yan, 2008). ‘Dagongmei’ is a Cantonese word and is commonly translated as ‘working sisters’ in recent research literature. According to Pun, ‘Dagong means ‘‘working for the boss’’, or ‘‘selling labour’’, connoting commodification and a capitalist exchange of labour for wages. Mei means younger sister. It denotes not merely gender, but also marital status. ‘‘mei’’ is single, unmarried and younger (and thus of a lower status)’ (Pun, 1999: 3). In documenting rural women’s lived experience of new forms of control generated by the combination of state power and global capital, these discourses, conversely, not only engender ‘hegemonic effects’ that ‘limit what individuals perceive as the subject positions available to them’ (Mills, 1997: 38) but also institute an almost homogeneous representation of rural migrant women, caught up in binary identity categories such as 2 This is well reflected in the rhetoric deployed by the government in making its policies, regulations and campaigns, etc. relating to rural migrants, such as ‘Several Suggestion for Solving Migrant Workers’ Problem’ promulgated by the State Council 18 N. Zhang / Geoforum 54 (2014) 17–27 rural/urban and traditional/modern, leaving no room to re-examine the fluidity of women’s negotiation of identity. The present paper draws on a qualitative study of rural migrant women in two popular destination cities in China – Beijing and Shantou, and two sending provinces, Hebei and Henan. It seeks to investigate how rural women negotiate, construct and perform identities in their gendered migration process. It also explores the situatedness of their identity negotiation, construction and performance, and how they draw on different resources to establish a sense of selfhood and belonging. By tracing the same cohort of rural women through their migration and return journeys from receiving cities to home villages I have been able to capture the fluidity of the negotiation, construction and performance of women’s identity, and to look at a combination of factors that influence the process, and the intertwined power relations that condition the process. ‘Suzhi’, ‘hukou’, ‘dagongmei’ and rural migrant women’s identity negotiation in contemporary China Seen as a ‘new Chinese working class’ in the making, rural migrant workers have been at the forefront of encounter with global capital and the new international division of labour (Pun, 2005: 4). The politics of their identity negotiation is intrinsically linked to China’s fast economic reform and development, modernization and urbanization, the dichotomy between rural and urban space, as well as to the disparity between regions and genders (Davin, 1999; Jacka, 2006; Lee, 1998; Pun, 1999, 2005; Solinger, 1995). Having contributed 16% of China’s GDP in the past twenty years (China Daily, 2006), rural migrant workers are said to be China’s most valuable economic asset (Harney, 2008). However, their labour is devalued by the new conceptualization of value and a ‘new logic of value coding’ within the new context of rapid transformations in China (Anagnost, 2004). The devaluation is attained through the use of ‘suzhi’ as a measurement. ‘Suzhi’ first appeared during the early 1980s in the state documents on population quality (renkou suzhi). Roughly means ‘quality’ in English, the term encompasses the changing relationship between value and bodies. Rural people are believed to have low ‘suzhi’ and hence, low quality. In popular discourses, the low quality (di suzhi) of the population, especially rural population, became the impediments to China’s modernization (Anagnost, 2004:190). Due to their rural origin, rural migrants’ labour is also devalued as having ‘low quality’ (Anagnost, 2004: 190). Their labour, therefore, can be purchased at a lower price, which allows for the extraction of surplus value that enables capital accumulation (Anagnost, 2004). Not only is the extraction of surplus value from rural migrant labour justified, but the new regimes of social differentiation and governmentality are also legitimised, through the value coding of ‘suzhi’ quality of the population, which has a direct impact on the identity negotiation of rural migrants – being a rural migrant itself implies having ‘low quality’ and less human capital (Anagnost, 2004). Furthermore, the Chinese government also deploys different strategies and migratory apparatus to differentiate rural migrants from urban residents. In so doing, it manages to keep migrant labour cheap and flexible, and hence remain competitive within the global market. The hukou system (household registration system) is but one of the many institutions that label and maintain these divides and differentiation. Being a peasant in China is not an occupation which one can easily change, but an identity or status that one is destined to carry and pass onto one’s descendants. Under the hukou system, rural migrants are denied permanent settlement in the cities due to their ‘agricultural’ hukou status, which they inherit from birth. Rural migrant workers in China are thus referred to as ‘nongmin gong’ 1 For more discussion on suzhi, please see also Anagnost (2004) and Yan (2008). (peasant workers). Classified as peasants in the city, rural migrant workers are not only valued as having ‘low quality’ (di suzhi), but are also denied equal access to social welfare, such as state subsidized medical care, education and social benefits in the city that are guaranteed for people with urban hukou, even if have migrated to the city and worked there for a number of years. In Shenzhen, for example, among its 14 million taxpayers, only 14% have local Shenzhen hukou and therefore have access to public welfare (Hou, 2007). Although the hukou system has undergone a series of reforms, the conversion from ‘agricultural’ to ‘non-agricultural’ status remains problematic, and the distinction between ‘agricultural’ and ‘non-agricultural’ hukou and related social welfare distribution, which privileges urban hukou holders, remains intact. With the hukou system in place, rural migrants’ ‘low quality’ (‘di suzhi’) is clearly labelled, their transient and secondary status come to be legitimized, and the source of cheap, flexible labour is secured. The influence of the hukou system in shaping Chinese people’s socio-economic status is indeed profound. The fact that rural migrants work in the ‘global factory’ in the city and are transformed to wage-labourers through global capitalism cannot, in effect, change their peasant status – they are linked to ‘low quality’ and are seen as having ‘a culturally distinct and alien ‘‘other’’, passive, helpless, unenlightened, in the grip of ugly and fundamentally useless customs, desperately in need of education and cultural reform. . .’ by urban elites (Cohen, 1993: 155). In addition to those policies that discriminate against both ‘peasants’ and ‘peasant workers’, the government often reinforces negative stereotypes of rural migrants through the way it creates and manipulates the use of collective identities such as ‘floaters’ (liumin), ‘blind floaters’ (mangliu) and ‘peasant workers’ (nongmin gong) in its policy making and propaganda, by which ‘peasant workers’ are depicted as a homogeneous mass, and a problematic ‘other’ with low quality (di suzhi) that needs to be ‘fixed’. The mass media merely reiterates the government’s position with regard to rural migrants, and tends to create stereotypical representations of rural migrants as being ignorant, linking them to human trafficking, crime, violence and prostitution. Rural migrant women are often portrayed either as victims of crime or as offenders who should be disciplined and punished (Sun, 2004). They are said to be the least desirable in the urban marriage markets (Fan, 2003). Through these mediatised representations, the images of ‘peasant workers’ as a problematic ‘Other’ become naturalized. As such, they ‘bear the brunt of urbanites’ discrimination, frustration, and scapegoating’ (Solinger, 1995: 130). Some scholars even consider the hukou system as a ‘quasi-apartheid pass system’ (Alexander and Chan, 2004). Recent research on Chinese rural migrant women’s identity and subjectivity has preferred to centre on the ‘dagongmei’ subject and the power of the state, institutions and media in shaping rural women migrants’ identity (Au and Nan, 2007; Beynon, 2004; Fan, 2002; Gaetano, 2004; Jacka, 2006; Lee, 1998; Pun, 1999, 2005; Sun, 2004; Yan, 2008; Zhang, 2001; Zheng, 2009). Lee’s study on rural migrant women working on the production lines in Shenzhen establishes an early picture of ‘dagongmei’, or in her words, ‘maiden workers’, as a contested identity for Chinese rural migrant women. She argues that while the factory management conceives maidens as docile, short-term, ignorant, but quiescent labourers, for ruralmigrantwomen, ‘dagongmei’ has a somewhat positive connotation – ‘a relatively independent, modern, and romantic lifestyle in anticipation of marriage and adulthood’ (Lee, 1998: 135, 136). Based on in 2006. 3 Thobani made similar comments about ‘bad’ and ‘good’ Muslim women. Please see Thobani (2007: 217–247). N. Zhang / Geoforum 54 (2014) 17–27 19 her study of female rural migrant workers in a factory in Shenzhen, Pun argues that although ‘dagongmei’ signifies ‘an inferior working identity inscribed with capitalist labour relations and sexual relations’, it is not necessarily a negative term for the young rural migrant women in her study; rather, the term provides new identities and new senses of the self that rural women can acquire once they work inside a global factory (Pun, 2005: 111). As a contested identity for rural migrant women, ‘dagongmei’ has also been undergoing various interpretations. Recent studies on rural migrant women for example, have extended its coverage to refer to ruralmigrant women in general (Beynon, 2004Gaetano, 2004; Jacka, 2005; Sun, 2004; Yan, 2008; Zheng, 2009). Yan, on the other hand, argues that dagongmei are liminal subjects caught up ‘between the city and the countryside, between disposable and necessary, between possibilities of absence and those of presence, and between disarticulation and articulation’ (Yan, 2008: 248). In Gender Trouble, Butler convincingly argues that gender identity is performatively constituted and is always a doing (Butler, 1990). The very process of rural migrant women’s identity negotiation is key to our understanding of their everyday lived struggles and resistance as both women and migrants in the city. Whilst the afore-mentioned studies have challenged different aspects of rural migrant women’s identity shaping and their lived experiences as migrant labour, to date, the situated, fluid nature of rural women’s identity construction has not been sufficiently explored. As a symbiosis of performed story and social relations, identity and experience are materially embedded: sex, class, race, ethnicity, sexuality, geography, religion, and so on (Langellier, 1999: 129). It is not an already accomplished fact, but a ‘production’ that is always in process and always constituted within representation (Hall, 1990). Despite facing multiple constraints in negotiating their identity, rural women migrants are by no means passive recipients in the process. Rather, they ‘accept, resist, choose, specify, invent, redefine, reject, actively defend. . .’ their identities (Cornell and Hartmann, 1998: 77). For migrant women, identity is not so much a static label but a threshold, a transition, which always produces itself through ‘the combined processes of being and becoming’ (Fortier, 2000: 2). Their agency lies in the very act of their identity construction and deconstruction, albeit the subversion itself is conditioned and constrained by discourse (Butler, 1990). To understand more fully the reactions and resistance of rural women as new entrants of the global capitalist system in transforming China, it is necessary to consider rural migrant women’s ‘alternative interpretations’ in their everyday lives and in their daily negation of the ‘hegemonic definitions’ of their identity in ever changing material circumstances during their migration process (Ong, 1991). This article presents such an attempt. Description of research The data used for this paper are drawn from a study of women in rural–urban migration in China, carried out between 2003 and 2005. A qualitative approach, which combines in-depth interviews, direct observations and participatory observations, is used to collect data. Sixty in-depth interviews with rural women migrants, their family members, fellow villagers and employers were conducted in four field sites: two popular destination cities with different social, economic and geographical characteristics—Beijing and Shantou, and two of the biggest rural migrant labour sending provinces—Henan and Hebei. Shantou and Beijing offer very different employment opportunities to rural migrants. Established as one of the very first coastal cities in the SEZ (Special Economic Zone), Shantou hosts a significant number of labour-intensive factories and attracts a large volume of rural migrants, especially women migrants, from all over the country (Zhang, 2000: 2), whereas in Beijing, the capital city, rural migrant women dominate the services sectors (Fafo, 2000). As for the selectionof sending areas, Henan is themost populatedprovince and has been ‘China’s no. 1 labour exporting province’ formore than a decade, having 2.2million of its agricultural labour force inmigration by the end of 2009 (Liang, 2010). Hebei migrants, on the other hand, constitute greater proportion of rural migrants in Beijing than migrants from any other province (Fafo, 2000). Both provinces are representative source areas in rural outmigration. Rural migrants rely heavily on their guanxi to obtain employment in the city. Guanxi could be understood as social ties of various strengths that are cultivated and maintained through the continued exchange of favours between different parties to achieve instrumental purposes in Chinese society (Bian and Ang, 1997; Lin, 2001; Yan, 1996a, 1996b; Yang, 2000). Channelled through guanxi, women migrants from the same sending area via the same guanxi network tend to cluster in the same work place. This is especially the case among rural migrant factory workers. Therefore in the SEZ, informants were first located within several factories. This enabled me to trace their journey back to their home villages and carry out further interviews with their family members and fellow villagers. Unlike in SEZ, most women migrants in Beijing hold jobs in the private service sectors which are difficult to locate. It was even more difficult to locate interviewees who come from the same village. The starting point of the fieldwork was therefore located in the sending area—a township in Hebei, which was recorded as having a high volume of rural women migrating to work in Beijing in the local government’s birth control data. Interviews were first conducted in the villages with families who had migrants working in Beijing. Using the information gathered from these families, I then traced the migrants back to Beijing to carry out further interviews with women migrants. Among the 60 informants, 33 were rural women migrants. 12 of the 33 informants came from the SEZ and 21 informants worked in Beijing. The remaining interviews were carried out with rural migrant women’s parents, husbands, fellow villagers (from villages in Henan and Hebei) and employers (three from Shantou, two from Beijing). The youngest woman migrant in the sample was 16 years old, with the oldest being 56 years at the time of the interview. The duration of these women’s migration experience ranged from one month to 14 years. Most informants from the SEZ were factory workers producing footwear, garments, hair ornaments, etc. mainly for the domestic market. Three factories also accepted outsourcing orders from bigger companies that targeted the international market. The sizes of the factories ranged from 1000 workers to fewer than 10. Most informants in Beijing came from sales and service, working as shop assistants, book keepers, nannies, street vendors or running small corner shops/shop counters. Unlike conventional migration research, which is often narrowly circumscribed in time and space and tends to focus on either the sending or receiving area at one point in the migration chain, the present study researchedbothendsof themigration chain fromboth directions. In the fieldwork, I acted as a ‘tracer’, following the same cohort of migrants through their migrant journey from their home villages to the receivingcity, and fromthe cityback to their homevillages. Data were collected throughout thewholemigration circle, in order to capture the dynamic nature of rural women’s migration. In addition to researching womenmigrants, I also conducted indepth interviews with women migrants’ family and fellow villagers in the countryside, as well as their friends, co-workers and employers in the city, so as to map rural women migrants in relation to others. This approach enabled me to examine the migrant community that rural migrant women inhabited and the context that conditions the negotiation of women’s identity, as well as to capture the fluidity of the negotiation, construction and performance of their very identity. This method was also vital in aiding data triangulation. 20 N. Zhang / Geoforum 54 (2014) 17–27 N. Zhang / Geoforum 54 (2014) 17–27 21 Despite the relatively small sample size, the study successfully captured the different patterns and characteristics of the female migrant population, both through the way in which informants were located and selected and the choice of sending and receiving areas to focus upon. Performing identities and searching for belonging – Chinese rural women in the internal migration circuit Migration involves more than a shift in physical location (Mills, 1997). It influences all stages of the life course of rural women regardless of whether they are migrants, migrant returnees or non-migrants (Murphy, 2002). On the one hand, rural migrant women may experience a series of transformations when they change from being invisible labourers in rural households to being urban wage earners. Conversely, by taking on this ‘modernity project’, rural women also have to face new modes of control and power relations. Rural migrant women are far from being a homogenous group. Indeed, their transformations and struggles, which intersect with gender and class, amongst other factors, are shaped by every aspect of women’s identity negotiation, construction and performance. As was noted by a young migrant woman in this study, ‘[After all these years of migration] there is one thing I understand most clearly: when your circumstances change, your views also change. My experience of migration forced me to change greatly.’ In the following section I will explore the shifting identities negotiated and performed by rural migrant women at different stages in the migration circle, in order to illustrate the fluidity and plurality of their identity construction and performance. Discarding peasant identity? Based on her study of rural migrant women in Beijing, Gaetano (2008) concludes that upon migration, rural women reject rural identity and all that it signifies, preferring instead to embrace ‘a more sexualized, urban femininity’ through a discourse of ‘eating spring rice’ (chi qingchunfan) (Gaetano, 2008: 641–642). Whilst it is undeniable that the impact of their experience of the ‘modern, outside world’ upon rural migrant women is not only immediate but also profound, and that many rural women are at the forefront in performing such impacts and changes, it is worth pointing out that embracing an ‘urban lifestyle’ or having a desire to be modern does not necessarily mean that migrant women can easily discard their peasant identity or the low quality (di suzhi) that is linked to it. Their rural hukou registration, their temporary and secondary status in the urban labour market and their gender specific waged work, along with the disparity between rural and urban space, invariably differentiate migrant women from an ‘urban, modern identity’ that is connected to high quality (gao suzhi). Such alienation and other institutional barriers that rural migrant women have to face in the city force them to rely heavily on their family and kinship guanxi networks for support, which may further push women to reconcile themselves to peasant identity. By interpreting migration as a ‘troubled process of subject formation’ particularly for rural young women, Yan concludes that 4 While most studies on Chinese rural migrant women can only reach migrant women from one profession, i.e. factory workers (Lee, 1998; Pun, 2005) and domestic workers (Yan, 2008), this study manages to reach and research migrant women from all walks of life, i.e. factory workers, domestic workers, sex workers, shop assistants, street vendors, entrepreneurs as well as those who are unemployed. Furthermore, I also managed to follow migrant women through the whole migration circle. It offers a most thorough insight into the lives of migrant women. 5 Words in brackets were added by the author. 6 Interview with 25-year-old Shan, who migrated from Henan in 1996. 7 A popular saying during the 1990s which implies young women live off their youth and youthful beauty. The ‘rice of the youth’ does not last forever, just as one’s youth fades. in the post-Maoist discourse of modernity, the countryside is produced as ‘a wasteland’ both materially and ideologically (Yan, 2008: 37). Yet subject formation is not only a troubled process for rural youth, but in fact, for all rural people. Despite the government’s effort to reduce the rural–urban disparity, the income gap between rural and urban areas continues to widen, and agricultural work is still considered to be ‘unprofitable, unattractive and even redundant economic activity’ by both rural and urban people (Croll and Huang, 1997: 129). Given that they endure a living standard that is far below that of the urban sector, are labelled as an underclass having low quality (di suzhi), and linked with feudal backwardness and the possession of a limited outlook, rural people do not readily accept such a peasant identity without complaint. Many, indeed, find ways to counter the negative discourses of peasant labels. One such strategy is to disassociate themselves from land and farming altogether. Many migrant women’s parents interviewed in this study took pride in the fact that their children never worked in the fields and had no knowledge of agricultural work. Rural migrant women also told me proudly that they did not have arable land at home, and that they were not involved in any work in the field, like ‘other’ peasants. Such a strong denunciation of farming and peasant label seems to occur well before rural women embark on their migration journey. Once in the process of migration, rural women became active performers of ‘modernity’ from many points of view. Their fellow villagers can readily list the ‘big changes’ in women after their migration: ‘The way they talk is different from people in the village. They speak in a civilized way. They also eat and dress differently.’ A villager in Hebei province also described in detail the fashionable pointy heels worn by migrant girls when they visited home: ‘The tips of the shoes are like screw drivers. . . Those migrant girls all have a pair of that kind of shoes and they all wear them when they come home.’ Through their ‘urbanized’ appearance and lifestyle, migrant women send out a clear message that they are different from their fellow villagers, and have renounced their relationship with land, agricultural work and peasantry. However, women’s performances of such changes are not always well received by their families or fellow villagers. Migrant women themselves are also sensitive in observing boundaries, which exactly reflects their careful preservation of aspects of peasant identity. Twenty-three year old Ping migrated to work in Beijing in 1999 at the age of 19. In talking about her fashionable outfits, she admitted that she had to make compromises with her parents back in her home village. Even though her parents had loosened their control over her as Ping grew older and became more experienced in migration, Ping still carefully observed the boundary, making every effort to have a ‘proper’ appearance when visiting home: Sometimes even my mum cannot accept the way I wear. I have a pair of European style shoes with very narrow tips. She said she would cut the tips of my shoes off if she saw me wearing them once more. . . . If I was young, in my 18, 19, or 20, they would definitely not allow me to wear what I liked. They would forbid me to wear this or that. But now they don’t say anything about it as long I don’t wear something too fashionable. Fully aware of their own changes, rural migrant women generally identify themselves as different from their fellow villagers. Some also try to distance themselves from their fellow villagers. Although Ping was not able to wear her fashionable heels in her home village, she was happy that unlike most of the girls of her age in her home village who had already got married and had children, she was still in migration. For Ping, they were from ‘disparate worlds’. 8 Villager from Hebei. 22 N. Zhang / Geoforum 54 (2014) 17–27 I feel that those of my playmates who grew up with me. . . we are from totally different worlds. They cannot accept me, while I can’t accept them, either. They don’t like the way I dress, and they don’t like my clothes and my shoes. I don’t like what they wear. Their clothes are very old-fashioned and out of date. They look like village girls, but I wear very fashionable clothes. They gossip a lot about me behind my back after they meet me, talking about this and that. They feel I look strange (kanbuguan) and I feel they are very conservative and very feudal-minded (fengjian). Such changes do not only happen among young, single women migrants. Married women migrants also experience the transformation and feel they can no longer fit into the ‘old’ circle of friends and fellow villagers in their home villages. They also identify themselves as different from their ‘left-behind’ fellow villagers. Fen had been selling eggs in a local market in Beijing for nearly ten years when I met her. Talking about her fellow villagers, she commented: ‘They stay in the villages and talk about the things that happen in the village, about which I have no idea at all. We do not have anything in common to talk about, and I am not interested in that kind of talk anymore.’ Fen also managed to stay away from her fellow villagers by making fewer visits to her home village. Rural women may, in fact, be able to give up their peasant identity more readily than rural men as they are less attached to the villages due to their ‘temporary’ status in the family as daughters and their role of an ‘outsider and stranger’ as wives when they move into their husbands’ villages upon marriage. However, it might be too soon to conclude that rural migrant women actually discard their peasant identity. Due to women’s transient status as a rural migrants in the city, they have limited guanxi networks in the urban area. By drawing boundaries against their fellow villagers in the countryside, rural women migrants thus further confine their guanxi networks to only family members, relatives and a handful of home fellows. Paradoxically, this strengthens their village-based family and kinship networks. Deeply embedded in their village kinship networks throughout the migration circle, rural migrant women are required to strike a balance between their desire to be modern and non-rural and villagers’ conventional moral codes for peasant women, even though urban waged work may provide them with the ability to resist to some extent the dominant patriarchal control over their lives. Embracing urban modernity? Just as they carefully preserve some aspects of peasant identity, rural migrant women do not ‘embrace urban modernity’ and pursue an urban identity blindly, either. Instead, they consciously evaluate different circumstances and make choices. Whether embracing urban modernity or not, migration opens up the arena for rural migrant women to contemplate and to perform the identities that are appropriate for them. Rural migrant women, especially young women, may make an effort to look ‘urban’ by wearing fashionable clothes and using make-up, yet they are fully aware of the inequality between urban and rural areas and the superior status of the urban locals. In consequence, they generally identify themselves as different from urbanites, especially in terms of their hukou status, job security, pension and welfare and education. Rural migrant women might be able to achieve with ease a modern, urban look, yet to feel modern and urban is not easily achievable for many. Zhengwas among the very few informants who had managed to enter the urbanites’ world in her migration – with the help of her 9 For a more detailed discussion, please see Zhang (2006, 2011). parents’ network, she had secured a job as a bookkeeper in a local trade union office at the Beijing Railway Bureau at the age of 21, where she could sit in the office along with local Beijingers and enjoy a stable salary and fixed working hours. However, just before she turned 25 years old, she resigned and returned home to Hebei province. Working along with local Beijingers day in and day out for nearly four years did not draw her closer to Beijing; rather, it pushed her further away from the city. As Zheng recounted: I am not saying that all of them (Beijing locals) are bad. I mean that everyone has his own living circle and his own friends and acquaintances. I don’t fit into their circle at all. . . . People are sophisticated in Beijing... That’s their nature because they grow up in a different environment. The people from the countryside are different. They also quarrel with me sometimes but they will forget immediately. . . They will not make up something about me to report to the boss behind my back. . . Zheng’s narrative shows a rather complicated picture of the boundaries and connections she built up through contact with those that surrounded her. She identifies herself as different from local Beijingers – ‘they’ (Beijingers) grow up in a different environment and she does not fit in ‘their’ circle. She also draws a boundary between local Beijingers and people from the countryside – Beijingers are sophisticated, whereas rural people are different. However, although she finds connections with ‘people from the countryside’ and she values their innocence, she does not consider herself as one of ‘them’ – rural people are described as ‘they’ and there is a clear boundary between her and rural people in her narrative. For Zheng, leaving Beijing was no easy decision. Besides her feeling of alienation among the Beijing locals, the lack of a Beijing hukou status and work contract, the lack of guanxi networks and difficulties in finding a marriage partner were all listed as reasons that contributed to her return in her narratives. Themajority of the rural womenmigrants interviewed held similar attitudes towards urban locals and people from the villages. Rural migrant women’s transiency and status as both an underclass and a stranger and outsider in the city alienate them from urban local residents. This alienation, nonetheless, pushes rural women to re-evaluate ‘those villagers’ they once wanted to be distant from. This engenders a sense of belonging to their home villages and a way of reconnecting to their fellow villagers from whom they once tried to disassociate themselves. However, this reconnection is not sufficient for rural migrant women to reposition themselves back among their fellow villagers due to the profound impact of their exposure to the urban world, at least not in a short period of time. Even for thosewomenmigrant returneeswho domuck inwith farm work eventually, the return to the home village is seen as a temporary interruption to their migration project, rather than a long term settlement. They manage to reconstruct an imagined identity as ‘a migrant in the city’ by differentiating themselves from their ‘fellow peasants’, reiteratingmemories about their life in the city and planning migration for the future. Would rural migrant women identify themselves with urban locals who have similar economic circumstances? Some migrant women in this study did express awareness of the growing poverty and inequality within urbanites. This awareness brought doubts to rural migrant women over the hegemonic discourse of the superior position of urbanites and the differentiation between rural migrants and urbanites. Twenty-two-year-old Nan migrated from a village in Hebei to work in Beijing in 1998 when she was 17. Working as a shop assistant selling second hand mobile phones in a local market, she 10 Please see Zhang (2013) for a more detailed discussion on rural women migrant