Beyond Tears and Laughter

This book explores the experience of China's migrant labourers in Shanghai from anthropological, and gendered analyses, offering extraordinary insights into the life-world of the marginalized people. China has hundreds of millions of internal migrants coming from the countryside to the big cities in search of fame, fortune, or just a living. The author also examines the gender dynamics at work, in intimacy and leisure of this marginalized, yet huge population. With an in-depth and multidisciplinary examination of the experience of restaurant workers in Shanghai, this book sheds humanising new light on the experience of the megacity from the inside and will be of direct value to policymakers, demographers, feminist scholars, anthropologists, sociologists, and responsible citizens.

Offers insights into the life-world of China's migrant laborers in Shanghai Analyzes the Chinese labor market in a sensitive and multidisciplinary manner Explores the political economic and gendered realities of the internal migrants in China

Autorentext
Yang Shen, with a PhD from the London School of Economics, is an assistant professor at School of International and Public Affairs at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Her work explores individual experiences of Chinese migrant workers within the contemporary globalized economy. Her current research focuses on housing and intimacy, online dating, and women's fertility practices under the changing family planning policy in China.

Klappentext
This book explores the experience of China's migrant laborers in Shanghai from economic, anthropological, and gendered analyses, offering extraordinary insights into the life-world of the marginalized people. China has hundreds of millions of internal migrants coming from the countryside to the big cities in search of fame, fortune, or just a living. The author also explores the political, economic, and gendered realities of this marginalized, yet huge population. With an in-depth and multidisciplinary examination of the experience of restaurant workers in Shanghai, this book sheds humanizing new light on the experience of the megacity from the inside and will be of direct value to policymakers, demographers, urbanists, anthropologists, sociologists, and responsible citizens.
Yang Shen, with a PhD from the London School of Economics, is an assistant professor at School of International and Public Affairs at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Her work explores individual experiences of Chinese migrant workers within the contemporary globalized economy. Her current research focuses on housing and intimacy, online dating, and migrant housing and informal settlement in China.

Inhalt

1. Introducing migration, gender and service sector.- 2. Gendered subjectivities in a patriarchal China.- 3. Working in a gendered, feminised and hierarchical workplace.- 4. The shortlived jobs: from beginning to end.- 5. Negotiating intimacy: obedience, compromise and resistance.- 6. Crafting a modern person via consumption? Women and men in leisure activities.- 7. Unpacking the complexity of gender, class and hukou.