Childhood and rural to urban migration in China: A tale of three villages

Abstract

This article examines how, for many in rural China, experiences of childhood are entangled within the complex processes of rural-to-urban internal migration. Drawing upon multi-generational life history data in three villages, it unpacks three common types of childhood experience. In Village A, where married men migrated but wives stayed behind, children grew up with 'absent fathers'. In Village B, both parents migrated to cities for work, leaving their children predominantly cared for by grandmothers as a surrogate. In Village C, where parents often took their children to a city with them, the children and their family had to navigate a hostile urban environment that rendered those of rural origin second-class citizens. Whilst childhood experiences in each setting were distinctive and shaped by their geographies, they shared common features reflecting the urban-rural divide and social inequalities embedded in Chinese society. In the public discourse, institutionalized inequalities experienced by rural communities are often disguised and downplayed with the focus instead on parental separation and the impact on 'left-behind' children. This article reveals it is the stability and quality of care arrangements, rather than mere separation from parents, that is critical to the development of the emotional well-being of children. Theoretically, the

Social reproduction in rural Chinese families: A three‐generation portrait

“…Until the last decade, during which Chinese journalists and researchers have drawn increasing attention to the plight of migrants' children (with the term ‘left‐behind children’ entering common vernacular), it was virtually impossible for migrants' children to gain admission to city kindergartens and schools. The only way to circumvent hukou regulations was to pay extra to the relevant school—an additional premium that could amount to a sum several times greater than the normal school fees (Liu, 2022a). The institutional segregation in the urban labour market and the hostility of Chinese cities in receiving rural migrants' families imply that reproductive work undertaken by family members who stay behind is critical to enabling migrants' work in the cities.…”

“…The first project examined the impact of migration on old age familial support systems in rural China (seeLiu, 2014;Liu, 2016; Liu, 2017;Liu & Cook, 2020). The second investigates how various aspects of family life (parent-child relations, conjugal relations, sexual relations and ageing and intergenerational support) have shifted across three generations in multiple sites in urban and rural China (seeLiu, 2022a;Liu, 2022b;Liu, 2022c; Liu, 2023).5 During the period of fieldwork (2016-2019), I also visited other rural villages and collected more life history interviews. Due to space and scope of an article, I confine discussions to the data collected in Village A and Village B exclusively as they have reflected two distinct organizations of reproductive work in rural younger generations.6 The village case studies were selected because the social reproduction arrangement was indicative of the pattern among the majority of the families in the specific village.…”

(Re)Constructing equality, diversity, and inclusion in Chinese childhoods: Intersectional perspectives and transdisciplinary approaches

“…In recent years scholarship concerning the experiences of and impact on Chinese left-behind children has expanded significantly (e.g. Ao and Aktaş, 2022;Huang and Zou, 2023;Liu, 2022) -usually presenting those children as deficit; whilst their own perspectives and voices are underheard in this body of scholarship. A possible explanation for this research gap is the methodological challenges perceived by Chinese childhood researchers when doing research with young children.…”