Migration, householding and the well-being of left-behind women in rural ningxia

China Journal

Volumn , Issue 67, 2012, Pages 1-22

  Jacka, Tamara ^a  

^a Department of Political and Social Change   (China)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

HOUSEHOLD STRUCTURE; MIGRATION; RURAL SOCIETY; WOMENS STATUS;

CHINA; NINGXIA HUIZU;

EID: 84857757927     PISSN: 13249347     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/665737     Document Type: Article

References (87)

1. Cindy Fan, China on the Move: Migration, the State and the Household (London: Routledge, 2008), pp. 86-88.
2. Among both men and women, migration rates peak at the 20-24 age group and decline thereafter. Overall, however, migrant women tend to be younger than migrant men and, after the age of about 30, female migration rates decline much more rapidly than male rates.
3. Cindy Fan, China on the Move, pp. 76-78.
4. A note about terminology: first, the English term "left-behind" has connotations of abandonment, which, as I suggest in this paper, are problematic. These connotations are not as strong in the Chinese word, liushou, which can be translated more literally as (those who) stay and hold the fort.
5. Xiang Biao, "How Far are the Left-behind Left Behind? A Preliminary Study in Rural China", Population, Space and Place, Vol. 13 (2007), p. 181.
6. Nevertheless, the sense that the liushou population has been abandoned in the rural hinterland pervades the Chinese literature. In this paper, I continue to use the term "left-behind" simply because it is the most common translation for liushou, and the most commonly used term in the global migration literature.
7. Mika Toyota, Brenda S.A Yeoh L and Liem Nguyen, "Editorial Introduction: Bringing the 'Left Behind' Back into View in Asia: A Framework for Understanding the 'Migration-Left Behind Nexus'", Population, Space and Place, Vol. 13 (2007), pp. 157-61.
8. Second, in this paper, I use the term "well-being" in a very loose sense. The Chinese word for well-being or welfare, fuzhi, common in Hong Kong and Taiwan, is rare in mainland China, and does not appear in the studies under consideration. Instead, these refer variously to physical and mental health (shenxin jiankang); psychology and emotions (xinli ganshou); life satisfaction (shenghuo manyidu); quality of life (shenghuo zhiliang); pressures and worries (yali danxin); family and marital relations (jiating guanxi, hunyin guanxi); and loads and burdens (fudan), including workloads and psychological burdens.
9. Dorothy Solinger, Contesting Citizenship in Urban China: Peasants, Migrants, the State, and the Logic of the Market (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999);
10. Cindy Fan, China on the Move.
11. Tamara Jacka, Rural Women in Urban China: Gender, Migration and Social Change (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 2006).
12. The object of discussion in this paper is a body of Chinese research focused explicitly on the situation of "left-behind women";
13. To date, there have been only a handful of English-language studies examining the situation of rural Chinese women whose family members have migrated out;
14. Rachel Murphy, "The Impact of Labor Migration on the Well-Being and Agency of Rural Chinese Women: Cultural and Economic Contexts and the Life Course", in Arianne M. Gaetano and Tamara Jacka (eds), On the Move: Women and Rural-to-Urban Migration in Contemporary China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), pp. 243-76;
15. Ren Mu and Dominique van de Valle, Left Behind to Farm? Women's Labour Re-allocation in Rural China, Policy Research Working paper WPS5107, The World Bank Development Research Group, Human Development and Public Services Team (2009), available at http://elibrary.worldbank.org/content/workingpaper/10.1596/1813-9450-5107, accessed 16 April 2011.
16. Mike Douglass, "Global Householding in Pacific Asia", International Development Planning Review, Vol. 28, No. 4 (2006), p. 423.
17. Nancy Folbre, "Hearts and Spades: Paradigms of Household Economics", World Development, Vol. 14, No. 2 (February 1986), pp. 245-255.
18. Mike Douglass, "Global Householding in Pacific Asia", p. 423.
19. Mike Douglass, "Global Householding in Pacific Asia";
20. Mike Douglass, "The Globalization of Householding and Social Reproduction in Pacific Asia", Philippine Studies, Vol. 55, No. 2 (2007), pp. 157-81.
21. Shannon May, "Bridging Divides and Breaking Homes: Young Women's Lifecycle Labour Mobility as a Family Managerial Strategy", The China Quarterly, No. 204 (December 2010), p. 900.
22. Ellen R. Judd, "Family Strategies: Fluidities of Gender, Community and Mobility in Rural West China", The China Quarterly, No. 204 (December 2010), pp. 921-38.
23. Jan Douwe., van der Ploeg and Ye Jingzhong, "Multiple Job Holding in Rural Villages and the Chinese Road to Development", Journal of Peasant Studies, Vol. 37, No. 3 (2010), p. 515.
24. However, some studies use the term "left-behind women" to refer only to married women aged 55 or under.
25. Li Xirong, "Nongcun liushou funü de hunyin wendingxing tanxi: yudong HCcun de ge an yanjiu" (The Stability of Marriages Among Rural Left-behind Women: A Case Study of HC Village in East Henan), Funü yanjiu luncong (Collection of Women's Studies), Vol. 6, No. 89 (2008), pp. 26-29.
26. Older women whose husbands or adult children have migrated are generally not referred to as "left-behind women" but, instead, as part of the "left-behind elderly" (liushou laoren) population.
27. Xu Chuanxin, "Nongcun liushou funü yanjiu: huigu yu qianzhan" (Studies on Left-behind Women in Rural Areas: Review and Prospects), Renkou yu fazhan (Population and Development), Vol. 15, No. 6 (2009), pp. 55-56;
28. Xu Chuanxin, "Xibu nongcun liushou funü jiating yali ji yingxiang yisu fenxi" (An Analysis of Family Stress and Factors Influencing It Amongst Left-behind Women in Western Rural Areas), Renkou yu jingji (Population and Economics), Vol. 178, No. 1 (2010), pp. 73-78;
29. Wu Huifang and Ye Jingzhong, "Zhangfu waichu wugong dui nongcun liushou funü de xinli yingxiang fenxi" (Analysis of the Psychological Impact of Husbands' Migration on the Women Left at Home in Rural China), Zhejiang Daxue xuebao (Renwen shehui kexue ban) (Journal of Zhejiang University [Humanities and Social Sciences]), Vol. 1 (2010), pp. 13-14.
30. Xu Chuanxin, "Nongcun liushou funü yanjiu: huigu yu qianzhan", pp. 55-56;
31. Wu Huifang and Ye Jingzhong, "Zhangfu waichu wugong dui nongcun liushou funü de xinli yingxiang fenxi", pp. 14-18.
32. Lou Binbin, "Zhangfu waichu dui funü de yingxiang" (The Impact of Husband Migration on Women) in Zheng Zhenzhen and Xie Zhenming (eds), Renkou liudong yu nongcun funü fazhan (Migration and Rural Women's Development) (Beijing: Shehui Kexue Wenxian Chubanshe, 2004), pp. 114-28;
33. Li Xirong, "Nongcun liushou funü de hunyin wendingxing tanxi";
34. Xu Chuanxin, "Nongcun liushou funü yanjiu: huigu yu qianzhan", p. 56;
35. Xu Chuanxin, "Hunyin guanxi manyidu: liushou funü yu feiliushou funü de bijiao yanjiu" (Marital Satisfaction: A Comparative Study of Left-behind and Non-leftbehind Women), Fun̈ yanjiu luncong, Vol. 5, No. 95 (2009), pp. 25-32.
36. Xiang Biao, "How Far are the Left-Behind Left Behind?", p. 180.
37. The questionnaire was conducted in July 2010, by a team of interviewers from the Snow Valley Public Health Bureau, trained and supervised by my collaborative research partner, who wishes to remain anonymous. The research partner was also responsible for subsequent SPSS data input and analysis. The two townships in which the survey was conducted were selected to provide a contrast between villages with high rates of migration and those with lower rates of migration. Within each township, villages closest to the township centre were selected and every woman in each village surveyed until we reached our target of about 1000 women in each township.
38. Respondents aged 16-20 are not included because there were only 4 in this cohort. The exclusion of women over the age of 60 is in line with the most common definition of "leftbehind women", as explained above.
39. The average household size among respondents was 5 people. Thus, the average annual per capita income was 1,200 yuan among the households of left-behind women and 1,000 yuan among the households of women with non-migrant husbands. In comparison, the official national average annual rural cash income per person at that time was 6,270 yuan (National Population and Family Planning Commission of China, "Basic Conditions of Rural Households, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2008, 2009", http://www.npfpc.gov.cn/en/about/detail.aspx?articleid=101222123614579955, (2010), accessed 8 April 2011.
40. Survey respondents were asked the following questions: "In the past year, have you had many conflicts (including verbal or psychological conflict and physical conflict) with your husband?" and "In the past year, have you had many conflicts (including verbal or psychological conflict and physical conflict) with other family members?" In both cases, possible responses were "none", "very few", "few", "many" or "very many". Here, we report the proportions of women who gave any response other than "none".].
41. Xiang Biao, "How Far are the Left-Behind Left Behind?", p. 180.
42. The following account is based on two interviews which I conducted with Li in July 2010 and January 2011; an interview between a male research assistant and Li's father-in-law in January 2011; and three interviews between a female research assistant and Li's father-in-law, motherin- law and husband respectively in April 2011.
43. Names have been changed, in order to protect identities. These interviews form part of a total of 147 semi-structured interviews, conducted by myself and two research assistants with a sub-sample of 54 left-behind and non-left-behind women from our original survey sample, most of whom we interviewed twice; household members of these women; a small number of non-related returning migrant women and men; and village leaders. Interviews were on average about an hour long, conducted individually, mostly in interviewees' homes. In most cases, the interviewer was accompanied by a member of the county Public Health Bureau, who helped to interpret between the local language and Mandarin, but there was no-one else present. Most interviews were audio-recorded with permission from interviewees.
44. A boy being given in adoption to a related household.
45. Andrew B. Kipnis, Producing Guanxi: Sentiment, Self, and Subculture in a North China Village (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), pp. 139-40.
46. 1 mu = 1/6 acre. When land was first parceled out to individual households following decollectivization in 1981, the Wang family received 23 mu. There has been no redistribution of land in the village since then. This means that neither Li, nor her sisters-inlaw marrying into the village, nor their children, have been allocated land. Under the "farmland to forest" program (tuigenghuanlin), 11 mu of the family's poorer mountain land was taken for tree-planting about 9 years ago.
47. Bernard H. Sonntag, Jikun Huang, Scott Rozelle and John H. Skerritt, China's Agricultural and Rural Development in the Early 21st Century, ACIAR Monograph No. 116 (2005), p. 243, available at: http://aciar.gov.au/files/node/642/MN116%20Part%201.pdf, accessed 8 April 2011.
48. Jan Douwe., van der Ploeg and Ye Jingzhong, "Multiple Job Holding in Rural Villages and the Chinese Road to Development", p. 519.
49. Across the villages that we visited, the average amount of land per capita ranged between about 2 and 4 mu (interviews with village leaders, July 2010). In addition, most households had several mu of sloping land taken over for tree-planting under the "farmland to forest" program (see above, n. 23).
50. Since the mid-2000s, rural households have no longer had to pay tuition fees for their children's nine years of compulsory education. This has raised social expectations. Whereas previously most Snow Valley villagers expected their children to leave school before the end of junior high school, now they strive for them to go to senior high school and even university. However, the costs of keeping children in school for this long remain extremely high. At the senior high school in Snow Valley county town, tuition fees alone were 1,360 yuan per annum in 2010. With regard to medical expenses, most villagers in Snow Valley are signed up to collective medical insurance, at a cost of 30 yuan per person per annum. However, the insurance only covers 80 per cent of hospital costs. Thus, serious illness or injury continues to be a major financial burden for villagers.
51. In comparison, a survey conducted in five western provinces in 2007 found that an average of 67.5 per cent of left-behind women respondents had husbands who were away from home for nine or more months each year.
52. Ye Jingzhong and Wu Huifang, Qianmo duwu: Zhongguo nongcun liushou funü (Dancing Solo: Women Left Behind in Rural China) (Beijing: Shehui Kexue Wenxian Chubanshe, 2008), p. 71.
53. Among women whom we surveyed in Snow Valley in the age cohort 21-35 years, the mean number of children was 1.7. In the cohort 36-50 years, the mean was 2.5 children, and in the cohort 51-60 years, it was 3.2.
54. For further discussion of the importance to left-behind women of mutual aid and other forms of social support.
55. Ye Jingzhong and Wu Huifang, Qianmo duwu, pp. 390-399.
56. Li is unusual in visiting her parents every day; other women visit their natal family on a weekly or monthly basis, but stay longer on each visit.
57. Margery Wolf, Women and the Family in Rural Taiwan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972).
58. Aside from this, Weiguo Zhang claims that, in North China, women's contacts with their natal families have increased in the post-Mao era for various reasons, including the greater degree of freedom that individuals have gained in managing their own time as a result of decollectivization and the greater ease of communication and mobility that has come with road-building, improvements in transport, and communications technology.
59. Weiguo Zhang, "'A Married Out Daughter is Like Spilt Water'?: Women's Increasing Contacts and Enhanced Ties with their Natal Families in Post-Reform Rural North China", Modern China, Vol. 35 [2009], pp. 256-83).
60. For further discussion of the relationship between rural migration, marriage strategies and women's kinship ties.
61. Shannon May, "Bridging Divides and Breaking Homes";
62. Ellen R. Judd, "Family Strategies".
63. Ellen R. Judd, Gender and Power in Rural North China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), pp. 189-91.
64. Even daughters without brothers do not necessarily inherit property; they only do so if they have married uxorilocally.
65. There is considerable regional variation in the way in which land usage-rights are distributed but, across rural China, discrimination against women in this regard is common. For further discussion.
66. Sally Sargeson and Song Yu, "Gender, Citizenship and Agency in Land Development", in Tamara Jacka and Sally Sargeson (eds), Women, Gender and Rural Development in China (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2011), pp. 24-48;
67. Laurel Bossen, "Reproduction and Real Property in Rural China: Three Decades of Development and Discrimination", in Tamara Jacka and Sally Sargeson (eds), Women, Gender and Rural Development in China, pp. 97-123.
68. Rachel Murphy, "The Impact of Labor Migration", p. 265.
69. Mike Douglass, "Global Householding in Pacific Asia", p. 423.
70. Frank Ellis, "Household Strategies and Rural Livelihood Diversification", Journal of Development Studies, Vol. 35, No. 1 (1998), pp. 1-38;
71. Flemming Christiansen, "Building Livelihoods: How Chinese Peasants Deal with State Regulation of Opportunity and Risk", in Norman Long, Ye Jingzhong and Wang Yihuan (eds), Rural Transformations and Development-China in Context: The Everyday Lives of Policies and People (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2010), pp. 133-51.
72. For further discussion and critique.
73. de Leo Haan and Annelies Zoomers, "Exploring the Frontier of Livelihood Research", Development and Change, Vol. 36, No. 1 (2005), pp. 27-47
74. Heather Xiaoquan Zhang, "Conceptualising the Links: Migration, Health and Sustainable Livelihoods in China", in Heather Xiaoquan Zhang, Bin Wu and Richard Sanders (eds), Marginalisation in China: Perspectives on Transition and Globalisation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 195-214.
75. Deborah Bryceson and Ulla Vuorela (eds), The Transnational Family: New European Frontiers and Global Networks (Oxford: Berg, 2002);
76. Shannon May, "Bridging Divides and Breaking Homes";
77. Ellen R. Judd, "Family Strategies".
78. Mike Douglass, "Global Householding in Pacific Asia", p. 421, n. 1.
79. Mike Douglass, "Global Householding in Pacific Asia", p. 421, n. 1
80. Ellen R. Judd, Gender and Power in Rural North China, p. 174.
81. For accounts of the household registration system, of reforms to the system, and how these have shaped migration patterns.
82. Kam Wing Chan and Will Buckingham, "Is China Abolishing the Hukou System?", The China Quarterly, No. 195 (September 2008), pp. 582-606,
83. Cindy Fan, China on the Move.
84. Wang Daxian, "Nongcun 'liushou funü' huzhu hezuo wenti de diaocha yanjiu: yi Anhui sheng Hanshan xian wei li" (Survey Research on Mutual Aid and Cooperation Among Rural "Left-behind" Women: Examples from Hanshan County, Anhui Province), Anhui ligong daxue xuebao (shehui kexue ban) (Journal of Anhui University of Science and Technology [Social Science]), Vol. 12, No. 3 (2010), pp. 81-104;
85. "Chungeng nongmang, Meishan liushou funü baotuan huzhu" (During the Spring Plowing Busy Season, The Leftbehind Women of Meishan Band Together in Mutual Aid), Zhongguo funü bao (China Women's Daily), 6 April 2010;
86. "Huzhuzu rang liushou funü zou shang shengchan shenghuo xin lu" (Mutual Aid Groups Enable Left-behind Women to Walk a New Path in Production and Life), Zhongguo funü bao, 20 August 2009.
87. Ellen R. Judd, "Women on the Move: Women's Kinship, Residence, and Networks in Rural Shandong", in Bryna Goodman and Wendy Larson (eds), Gender in Motion: Divisions of Labor and Cultural Change in Late Imperial and Modern China (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), p. 113.