(Un)Making home at the borderlands of the rural and the urban: Chinese migrant women’s narratives

Abstract

This study examines the discourses collected in interviews with second-generation Chinese rural migrant women in Chongqing to unpack how they make sense of home. Guided by Blunt and Dowling’s (2006) critical geography of home and Anzaldúa’s concept of borderlands, we interpret three overlapping themes: (a) constantly (re)making “home” that is neither here nor there; (b) bordering in-between aging parents and young child(ren); (c) social and political changes (un)making home in migration. Our findings endorse approaching “home” as a verb to better capture complex experiences with homing at borderlands.

Keywords:

• home
• identity
• borderlands
• narrative
• migrant women

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zhou Li (PhD, Ohio University) is an associate professor in the School of Foreign Languages, Southwest Jiaotong University (Chengdu, China). Her research is focused on multiple networks in identity construction with the objective of unraveling the systematic oppression of Chinese women, which is in line with liberatory politics. Her research has been published in the Journal of Business Ethics and Critical Discourse Studies, among others.

Yea-Wen Chen (PhD, University of New Mexico) is an associate professor in the School of Communication at San Diego State University. In 2019, she was appointed Provost Professor of Equity in Education on this campus. Her research is focused on how communication—including silence—about cultural identities affects diversity, inclusion, and social justice across several contexts, such as identity-based nonprofit organizations.