UC Santa Barbara

This paper seeks to contribute to the understanding of how internal migration in globalizing China shapes migrant parents’ decision to raise their children. The case study focuses on how do poor and not-so-poor migrant parents care for their children both from afar and close by. The findings on which it is based come from three main sources. The first consisted of twenty semi-structured interviews with migrant parents and their now-adult children from different social-economic backgrounds in Beijing, China. The second source comes from participant observation at a migrant children’s school in Beijing. The third source comes from archival research in California, where I gather the push-pull factors for migration within China, as well as the institutional barriers that prevents rural migrant parents and their children from utilizing social services in urban cities. Drawing from existing scholarship on China’s globalizing economy, hukou reform, feminization of migration, and children of migration, I attempt to examine what does migrant family structures reveal about China’s institutional discrimination? How do poor and not-so-poor migrant parents in Beijing care for their children? And how does migration effect now-adult children’s outlook on life and work? By studying this topic, I hope to deepen the understanding of the social cost of migration on family relationships and children behind China’s aggressive economic development. Moreover, this study aims to elevate the discussion of migrant families from the margins of scholarly research to a position of greater centrality.