Young rural–urban migrant fathers in China: everyday ‘China Dream’ and the negotiation of masculinity

ABSTRACT

Drawing upon a study on rural–urban migrant young men at a delivery company in a southern Chinese city, I examine how they make sense of their private life as fathers. Situated within the pervasive national discourse of the ‘China Dream’ in which individual aspiration for a better life is advocated in line with the prosperity of the nation marked by neoliberal modernization, the paper seeks to understand how the marginalized urban working-class young men make sense of their subjectivities through a gender lens. In particular, I investigate the process of masculine identification in the young migrant fathers’ narratives. It highlights the way the young men negotiate ordinary masculine ideals and familial practices of modern fatherhood, desiring a better future for the next generation. I explore how they navigate through the constraints of material inequalities (i.e. as urban working class) and the tension with their gender responsibilities/expectations within a wider familial context, in making sense of their gender subjectivities.

KEYWORDS:

• Fatherhood
• masculinity
• rural–urban migration
• China Dream

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the British Academy/Leverhulme Trust for providing funding (Ref. SG142139) to support the fieldwork in China.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Xiaodong Lin is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of York. He has been writing in the field of men and masculinities in China. He is the author of Gender, Modernity and Male Migrant Workers in China: Becoming a ‘modern’ man (London, Routledge). The book was shortlisted for the British Sociological Association Philip Abrams Memorial Prize 2014. He has also edited a collection, entitled ‘East Asian Men: Masculinity, Sexuality and Desire’ (with C. Haywood and M. Mac an Ghaill, 2017, London: Palgrave). He has published articles in Gender, Work & Organization and Gender, Place & Culture.

Notes

1. The paper is based on a British Academy/Leverhulme Trust funded research project (Ref: SG142139), entitled ‘Revisiting rural–urban migrant men in China: exploring youth, masculinities and aspirations’.

2. Wang (2014) acknowledges that the concept of the China Dream is maintained by the Chinese President Xi as a dream ‘to realize the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’. The concept has been simultaneously promoted by the government ‘to convince the general public that the dream was also for each individual Chinese. The realization of this dream for the country would be the catalyst for the realization of the dream for the individual’ (Wang, 2014, p. 8).

3. Full Text: Xi Jinping's remarks to the press. http://www.china.org.cn/chinese/18da/2012-11/15/content_27121782.htm.

4. All the participants in the study have been anonymized.

5. China's online shopping activities are growing. It is reported that 2.47 trillion yuan of sales was achieved just in the first five months of 2017, up to 32.5% year on year. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2017-06/16/content_29775936.htm.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by British Academy [grant number SG142139].