ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the causes, processes, and consequences of migration used as a strategy of empowerment by rural women in their work, families, and communities in China. It focuses solely on the formal education of migrant children who 'floated' with parents to the cities. At the core of liberal feminism's effort to engender citizenship to be inclusive of women, Hobson and Lister with other scholars have proposed a gender-pluralist model of citizenship that articulates a politic of difference, transversal politics, and solidarity among different groups. In the post-reform era of the 1980s, as China ventured into market economies, the Chinese government began to relax migration restrictions due to high industrial labor demands. As a result, spatiality creates fragmented and unequal citizenship using urban hukou as a control mechanism reinforced by the state. Migrant women Suk Ling and Wing Fong represent two different types of migration patterns and decisions that centered on child-rearing and schooling issues.
