Leisure as a Constraint and a Manifesto for Empowerment: The Life Story of a Chinese Female Migrant Worker

Abstract

Using a series of life-story interviews with a female migrant live-in caregiver in Beijing, this study examined the history and evolution of the migrant worker’s migration and the impacts it had on her leisure experience, identities, values, and social positions. The findings revealed that migration imposed unique constraints on her leisure, such as those related to the overlap of work and leisure time and space, limited finances, preference for money accumulation over spending on leisure, illiteracy, alienation from the host population, and a breakdown of family ties. Migration to the city, however, also led to her economic and gender empowerment, presented new leisure opportunities, and contributed to the development of new leisure attitudes.

Keywords:

• Rural-to-urban migration
• Leisure
• Chinese internal migrations