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As a significant embodiment of Chinese subalternity, the subject formation of rural migrant women presents the multiple power dynamics emerging in the course of modernisation, industrialisation and urbanisation in post-reform China. Northern Girls, a novel written by contemporary Chinese female writer Sheng Keyi, provides a realistic account of survival for this marginalised group of women that is intertwined with class, gender and rural–urban disparities. This paper takes this novel as a case study, exploring how the female subaltern subject is discursively reconstructed through literary translation. Regarding the English translation as part of the transcultural flow of ideas between Western and indigenous Chinese feminisms, this paper examines its translation strategies, demonstrating how gender stereotypes, misogynous discourse, power relations and female agency in a gendered subaltern narration are rewritten in a hegemonic language. The analysis reveals that the English version rearranges the intersectional dynamics of power in post-reform China. While the gendered autonomy and agency are reinforced in the target text, the discursive construction of the Chinese female subaltern is simplified by a hegemonic formation of feminism and modernity that underplays the original 'reverse discourse' in non-Western women's writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Public health service is an important guarantee by the government to safeguard the health rights of rural migrant women. This not only concerns the health status of rural migrant women and their willingness to stay in the urban area but can also affect their fertility intention. This study systematically examined the impact of public health services on the fertility intentions of rural migrant women as well as the mechanisms, underlying these intentions based on the data from the 2018 China Migration Dynamics Monitoring Survey. Urban public health services, including health records management and health education, could effectively enhance the fertility intentions of rural migrant women. Furthermore, their health status and willingness to stay in urban areas were important mechanisms, by which, the public health services could influence the fertility intentions of rural migrant women. Additionally, urban public health services have a better effect on improving the fertility desire of rural migrant women who have no pregnancy experience, a low income level, and a short residence time in the inflow area. This study contributed to the examination and clarification of the policy effects of public health services on the fertility intentions of rural migrant women. Additionally, it also provided important evidence to support the government policies related to the optimization of the public health service system, improvement of the health status, citizenship, and fertility intentions of the rural migrant women, as well as the development of the uniform public health services.

Public health service is an important guarantee by the government to safeguard the health rights of rural migrant women. This not only concerns the health status of rural migrant women and their willingness to stay in the urban area but can also affect their fertility intention. This study systematically examined the impact of public health services on the fertility intentions of rural migrant women as well as the mechanisms, underlying these intentions based on the data from the 2018 China Migration Dynamics Monitoring Survey. Urban public health services, including health records management and health education, could effectively enhance the fertility intentions of rural migrant women. Furthermore, their health status and willingness to stay in urban areas were important mechanisms, by which, the public health services could influence the fertility intentions of rural migrant women. Additionally, urban public health services have a better effect on improving the fertility desire of rural migrant women who have no pregnancy experience, a low income level, and a short residence time in the inflow area. This study contributed to the examination and clarification of the policy effects of public health services on the fertility intentions of rural migrant women. Additionally, it also provided important evidence to support the government policies related to the optimization of the public health service system, improvement of the health status, citizenship, and fertility intentions of the rural migrant women, as well as the development of the uniform public health services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neighborhoods play a central role in the integration and urbanization process of the migrant population. Rural migrant women in China, influenced by their dual identity of gender and registration status, exhibit unique characteristics and risks in terms of their mental health status and its relationship to the neighborhood environment. However, existing research on rural migrant women is limited, particularly in revealing the impact of the neighborhood environment on their mental health. Drawing on a recent survey conducted in Nanjing, China, this paper uses a structural equation model (SEM) to examine the determinants of mental health among rural migrant women from the perspective of neighborhood effects. The findings suggest that the impact of different factors within the neighborhood environment on the mental health of rural migrant women varies. The built environment has a more significant influence on mental health compared to the social environment. The social environment acts as a mediator and moderator between the built environment and mental health. Distinct differences exist between the pathways by which neighborhood environment affects the mental health of rural migrant women at different socioeconomic levels. Improving mental health and advancing sustainable development goals requires enhancing community environments and addressing the inner needs of rural migrant women. • Improving the neighborhood environments contributes to the rural migrant women's mental health. • Compared to the social environment, rural migrant women are more concerned with the built environment. • The social environment affects the relationship between the built environment and the mental health of rural migrant women. • Having a high socioeconomic status helps to resist the adverse effects of the neighborhood environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Address a multi-scalar sense of home in urban destinations and rural origins. • Feminism and confucian ideology explain Chinese rural migrant women's sense of home. • Family gender roles, social relations and sensory experiences define home in China. • Rural migrant women's various sense of home reveal China's changing gender ideology. In the context of changing patterns in migration and migrant population, the concept of 'home' for migrants has broadened, extending to multiple dimensions and scales. While working and living in Chinese cities, rural migrant women face both institutional and individual gender discrimination under Confucian ideology and patriarchal culture. Meanwhile, in contemporary China, a series of changes in context, including education massification, cultural modernisation and the improvement in women's socioeconomic status, have transformed the thoughts and behaviours of rural migrant women, leading to their diversified construction of a home. Based on in-depth face-to-face interviews and employing 'critical geographies of home', this study explores rural migrant women's sense of home in contemporary China at multiple scales and in urban destinations and rural origins. The study reveals that rural migrant women in China create various forms of intimacies in their daily lives and negotiate the power relations embedded in Confucian ideology to build their lived and desired 'home' at multiple scales. The 'soft' environment and material objects contribute to their sense of home across the boundaries of urban and rural areas. Overall, the study underscores that rural migrant women's unstable and fragile 'home' reflects their plight in contemporary urban China. Nevertheless, cities provide an important platform for some migrant women to escape from persistent gender discrimination in rural areas and develop a sense of home based on independence, equal gender norms, respect from locals, and engagement in urban life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article studies rural migrant women working in the Shanghai beauty parlour industry, focusing on how this industry emphasises affective labour and articulates it along lines of migration, gender and seniority. The analysis looks at three types of female beauty workers: apprentices, senior beauticians, and entrepreneurs. Bringing together Hardt and Negri’s (2004) theorisation of affective labour and Yang Jie’s (2011) notion of aesthetic labour, this article investigates how the affective and aesthetic labour demanded from these migrant women affects their minds and bodies, and their position and value in the marriage market. On the basis of fieldwork conducted in Shanghai, the article begins by exploring the ways in which the demand of Shanghai beauty parlour industry for affective labour impacts the ability of rural migrant women to enter into other forms of affective relationships. It goes on to argue that affective labour in this industry is not wholly negative, but modifies bodies and minds in ways that can be both oppressive and enabling, depending on, among other things, the beauty worker’s level of seniority. Finally, the article proposes that, in the beauty parlour industry, there is a reciprocality with affective labour that includes the workers as well as the clients. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

China’s rise within a global economy has had diverse consequences for Chinese women. For the super rich and the rising middle class, it has offered opportunities for vast wealth. For the newly emergent underclass of migrant workers who have flooded to the cities, it has engendered exploitative states of vulnerability, especially for rural women. In this paper we locate our inquiry in the context of globalization and its impact on rural women’s lives as witnessed through the medium of a unique and distinctive women’s life narrative, Sheng Keyi’s Bei mei (Northern Girls). The text testifies to the underside of women’s lives within the new market economy, documenting the cruelty of global capitalism. It presents an alternative version of the history of China’s rise in the global economy and maps a trajectory of increasing inequality from a previously silenced female perspective. Sheng Keyi’s world speaks to the sordid world of women, the world of yin. It coexists with the dizzying ascent of the yang―as the powerful nation grapples with social inequality and fragmentation. In its international circulation, Northern Girls opens readers to the contradictions and ambivalent aspects of China’s economic rise and its consequences specifically for migrant women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China, continuous rural–urban migration on a massive scale disrupts the traditional rural patriarchal society and makes the temporary non-patrilocal way of residence possible. This new residential pattern has brought profound changes to the lives of migrants. Based on participant observation and interviewing, this article intends to explore the exercise of agency and the representation of subjectivity of female migrant workers in intimate relations after migration. By emphasizing the intergenerational relationship and partner relationships of both unmarried and married women, I demonstrate a complicated picture regarding the changing status of rural migrant women and show how these women both conform and challenge the social norm of filial obligations, through which their agency is exerted and subjectivity is crafted. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is concerned with the cultural politics of agency, and explores the relationship between cultural form, migrant experience and social change. It traces the emergence of a range of literary forms in south China and how these new cultural forms provide hitherto unavailable space to contest the state- and market-driven narratives, which tend to linkdagongmei’s (rural migrant women’s) sexuality with inexperience and vulnerability on the one hand, and criminality, immorality and incivility on the other. The paper suggests that these newly emerging cultural forms present alternative perspectives on the practical circumstances, moral rationalities and emotional consequences that condition and shape migrant women’s sexual experience, and for this reason, they constitute important points of intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]