The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Citizenship by Zhonghua Guo

Author:Zhonghua Guo [Guo, Zhonghua]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781000472226
Goodreads: 59789069
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-11-29T00:00:00+00:00

Doing gendered citizenship from the margin

‘Class’ differences generated by the rural–urban divide and institutionalized through the household registration system, together with gender disparity, have trapped female migrants in a predicament. Some of them enter the sex business but find themselves in an awkward situation with a lot of stigma and yet difficult to ‘return’ to their past lives. We can see boundaries of age, gender, sexuality, profession, class, and the combination of them, to be crossed. For these people, a substantial improvement in livelihood via institutional breakthrough, such as fundamental change of the hukou system and the elimination of the discriminating regulations on the floating population, is highly difficult, if not impossible. How do they struggle for a more decent living space in the cities? How do they get what they want and realize their various desires as migrants and women, especially when some of them bear multiple stigma? How do they understand and do their citizenship from such a marginal social position? As a special group of female rural-to-urban migrants, the experience of female sex workers may be a good demonstration of how people do urban citizenship via alternative practices. Through their stories readers can understand more about citizenship as multi-layered, dynamic, desire-driven and action-oriented boundary-crossing practices.

The interlocking effects of multiple identities operate to influence the women’s experiences. For example, being sex workers helps them afford the performance of the urban ideal, but at the same time it is this status that brings stigma. Their rural migrant status induces discrimination in the cities, but simultaneously creates a combined image showing rural quality such as perseverance, being healthy and strong and hard-working, and urban merits such as being smart, fashionable, sophisticated and modern. This mixture to some degree facilitates commercial exchange. The women have multiple ways to weaken the rural migrant stereotypes, to reduce stigma attached to their identity of being sex workers, to gain more convenience and living space for their urban stay, to maximize their agency and power, and to struggle against any constraints posed by their marginal identities.

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