| Abstrakt: |
Studies on the internal urban to rural migration in China over the past three decades have paid little attention to the emotional displacement of the migrants, either overlooking the impotency of migrant social networks in providing consistent emotional and spiritual support or overestimating the affective connection between individual migrants and their rural families. This paper, drawing upon twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork on 19 second-wife arrangements in contemporary China, explored in depth the intimate worlds of some migrant women who entered into long-term relationships with married men in their urban destination. I argue that the reason why some rural women entered into second-wife arrangement lies, in a large part, in the social and emotional displacement they had encountered in the process of rural to urban migration. Individual labor migration compounded rural women's longing for security, care, and belonging while minimizing sources of emotional support. Migrant women thus proceeded to meet these needs, as a last resort, through stigmatized heterosexual relationships. The second-wife arrangement, however, tended to place many migrant women in a situation of isolation, dependency and disempowerment. The findings illuminate the hidden effects of regional inequality and labor migration in China on migrant women's emotional well-being and social belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
