| Publication |
2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article highlights the case of a rural north-east Chinese village where youth labour mobility is a marriage strategy deployed by parents and engaged in by young people given constraints on education and income in the countryside. While some rural mothers and their daughters do make the fairytale of "marrying-up" into an urban household come true, for most rural young women migrants the self-oriented consumption that they are encouraged to pursue free of rural domestic responsibilities sets them up for heartbreak when they are brought back for a rural marriage. As long as rural households are left to rely on the "insurance" of land and a younger generation to work it and provide labour of domestic subsistence, they will pull sons (and wives for them) back to the countryside, and try to marry daughters to urban households to expand their network of security. This new twist on an old managerial strategy sets up a tragic conflict: young men are encouraged to return to the countryside, while young women are pushed to provide a "uniting bridge" into the city and, when they fail, are brought back to the countryside for marriage. If the experiences of families in Huangbaiyu village are not an anomaly but signal a broader trend, a generation of returnee young women who are frustrated and angry in rural marriages and abandon their husbands and parents-in-law will dramatically influence the future of China's development.
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