ABSTRACT
A critical element of contemporary China as a rising power is its dependence on internal rural–urban migration. A major achievement of feminism is to establish gender as a central analytical category. In this context the study of male migrant workers seeks to highlight the under-researched notion of internal migrant men as a gendered category, making a contribution to current studies of gender and rural–urban migration in China (Jacka, 2006; Pun, 2005). This study has documented Chinese male migrant workers’ lived experience of migration and their identification of becoming a ‘modern’ man through their narratives of family and work. Perhaps the main conclusion revolves around the several shifts that I have made in the process of carrying out this study. At a theoretical, methodological and personal level, the main shift has been from what I assumed to be a simple question at the beginning of the research that was in fact highly complex. In other words, I needed to make rather than take the research question (Young, 1971; Seeley, 1966) in addressing the male peasant workers’ rural–urban migration.
