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Home-making and Gender in Contemporary Chinese Migration: The Case of Highly Educated Female Migrants in Shenzhen, China
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Join us for an ISS21 Lunchtime Research Seminar, jointly hosted by ISS21 Migration & Integration and ISS21 Genders, Sexualities and Families Research Clusters.
ISS21 Lunchtime Research Seminar
Jointly hosted by ISS21 Migration & Integration and ISS21 Gender, Family & Sexualities Research Clusters
Home-making and Gender in Contemporary Chinese Migration:
The Case of Highly Educated Female Migrants in Shenzhen, China
Dr. Meiyun MENG
(Radical Humanities Laboratory/MIGMOBS project)
Wednesday October 16th @ 1.00-2.00pm
Mary Ryan Meeting Room (O’Rahilly Building, Ground Floor)
This seminar explores how highly educated women who have relocated to Shenzhen from other regions of China navigate traditional gender norms. Often referred to as China’s "Silicon Valley," Shenzhen stands as a symbol of the country’s neoliberal development, attracting both highly skilled professionals and rural-to-urban migrants. By 2009, 95% of Shenzhen’s population had been born elsewhere, with an average age of 28. This influx of young labour has transformed Shenzhen from a small fishing village into a global tech hub within four decades. However, beneath this economic success, Shenzhen has faced criticism for its exploitative labour practices, particularly towards low-skilled workers, with a demanding work culture and high suicide rates among female rural-to-urban factory workers.
This seminar seeks to shed light on the underexplored dilemmas and challenges facing highly skilled and educated female migrants in Shenzhen, highlighting their unique experiences in navigating the city’s neoliberal environment.
By examining the everyday geographies of their home-making, I reveal how these women, as domestic migrants, challenge stigmas surrounding singlehood and the dominance of heteronormativity within the city’s urban context. Through an in-depth analysis of biographical narrative interviews and home video tours of two distinct groups—single female professionals and women from diverse non-traditional family structures—this seminar will engage with key themes of home-making, gender, and highly skilled/educated mobility, addressing global issues such as domestic migration, urbanisation, and gendered experiences in neoliberal shifts in China.
Hosted by the ISS21 Migration & Integration Research Cluster and the ISS21 Gender, Family & Sexualities Research Cluster
All are welcome