Abstract
“Leaving the rural area is really important for girls,” insisted Chanquan. Over the course of several hours of interviews with me, Chanquan elaborated on her efforts to get to the city and to find a way to stay there permanently. As a single woman, she saw one after another route to her goal close down. As a poor villager, she was unable to access an educational route out. She had not been hired into a job that might give her an urban hukou. And she was about ready to marry a man who also had a rural hukou. At some points in her conversations, she was frustrated and sad about her failures along the way, and at other points, showed herself to be absolutely committed to achieving her goal of urban residence. She spoke with passion and resolve.
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Notes
- 1.
See Chan and Buckingham (2008: 64) on how the hukou system remains “alive and well.”
- 2.
The census data on migrants are not complete, of course. The census data collection is most likely to miss the least stable migrants; collecting data on any migrants who are without official sanction is difficult.
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Riley, N.E. (2013). Urban as Paradise: Understanding the Urban/Rural Divide. In: Gender, Work, and Family in a Chinese Economic Zone. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5524-6_3
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