Identities of Women Migrant Workers: The Intersection of Gender, Class and Place of Origin

Abstract

When new women migrant workers are drawn into the global capitalist economy, they experience a transition from their ‘old’ identities (as peasants, rural residents, housewives and immigrants) to ‘new’ identities (as workers). In this process, their identities as unwed young women are also constructed by state and societal discourses about their origins.

When I’m in the factory, I’m a worker. But when I’m home, I’m a peasant.¹

A female peasant worker

When I first came to work in the factory in 1982, peasants like me did not even dare to sit with urban people when we were dining. I myself always feel that I am a peasant, a xiangxiaren [country bumpkin] even though I am working in the factory, and they are urban people. Urban people naturally have higher status than us bumpkins. Now, I feel comfortable chatting with them. In the past, unless they asked me something, I would not initiate conversations. In the past, one could always hear urban people say ‘this bumpkin, that bumpkin’, showing contempt to us. Now bumpkins and urban people are no different. I think wailaimei are like us when we first started working here. Peasant workers do not live in the same building as migrant workers. They feel they are different from us, just like we felt we were different from urban people in the past.²

Jing, a female peasant worker