Seminario | Masculine Compromise: The impact of migration on men's changing elderly care practices in China
Aula STO2, Palazzo Luzzatto Dina, Via del VEscovado, 30 - Padova
08.10.2024
Martedì 8 ottobre 2024, ore 14:30
Prof. Susanne Yuk Ping Choi (Professor of Sociology, Chinese University of Hong Kong), Masculine Compromise: The impact of migration on men's changing elderly care practices in China
Organizzato nell’ambito dell'insegnamento di Migrations in World History (CdS - Mobility Studies). Prof. Niccolò Pianciola
Abstract
How has migration changed intergenerational dynamics in rural China and altered elderly care practices? Official figures suggest that there were 295 million rural-to-urban migrants in China in 2021. Among them 63% were male. While rural men and women of working age have left the villages en masse to take jobs in the city, elderly people and children have remained behind. In this seminar, I argue that rural to urban migration has created a paradoxical intergenerational dynamic and change the cultural tradition of elderly care; not only has it rendered it problematic for adult men to fulfill their obligations to care for their ageing parents, it has also meant that ageing parents are called on to fill the care gap experienced by the younger generation, acting as caregivers for their grandchildren, also left behind when their sons and daughters-in-law emigrate. Analyzing interview data with over one hundred male rural to urban migrant workers in South China, I delineate the multiple strategies migrant men develop to cope with this elderly care gap and the processes they use to rationalize the discrepancies between their beliefs about male filial piety and practices with respect to care for the elderly. The diverse strategies male migrant workers and their families use to bridge the elderly care gap represent an adaptive response to the challenge migration poses to traditional Chinese family values and intergenerational relationships.
Short bio:
Susanne Yuk Ping Choi is Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professor at University of Oxford, and Professor of Sociology/Co-Director of the Gender Research Centre at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include migration, gender, family, and sexuality in Asia. She received her D.Phil. in Sociology from Nuffield College, University of Oxford. She was a RGC-Fulbright Senior Award recipient and visiting scholar at Department of Sociology, Harvard University, and a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at Asia Research Institute (ARI), National University of Singapore. Her lead-authored book Masculine Compromise: Migration, Family and Gender in China published by the University of California Press received the Best Book Award of the International Sociological Association’s Sociology of Migration Section (RC31).
Foto: Source: Matt Ming (Migrant Worker Style on Flickr), A migrant worker returning home after a probably long shift. Although they often work on construction sites, a lot of the migrant workers wear neat jackets - a relic of the communist past where belonging to the working-class was honourable. Via Wikimedia Commons
