ABSTRACT
Recent years have witnessed growing debate on integration and social inequalities as a result of the expanding scale of rural-urban migration in China. It is seen as a major social phenomenon in contemporary Chinese society. At the same time, it has raised a range of interconnecting issues in relation to the issue of marginalization, such as exclusion, inequality and social justice. This chapter addresses an underdeveloped field of inquiry, exploring the lives of a group of socially marginalized men - male migrant workers. It examines the rural men's narratives of their migrating experience in urban China, with particular reference to their gendered experiences and practices in relation to their familial lives. The chapter contributes to an understanding of marginalization in the context of rural migrating men as both social exclusion and symbolic otherness, within the context of the reconfiguration of the relation between tradition and modernity at a time of rapid, globally inflected change.
