Parenthood, Divorce and Migration: The Complex Justification of Divorced Mothers Migrating from Northern China to France

• In Event: On the Move for Money, Left Behind for Love: Negotiating Work and Family in Cross-Border Migration

Abstract

Since the late 1990s, a new migration flux from northern cities in China to the Parisian region in France has been observed. This flux’s composition is very atypical: most of the migrants are urban, middle-class citizens who left China in their forties, with women representing 70% of them. Most of them left China soon after their divorce and entrusted their children to the care of grandparents. Once in France they became irregular migrants and work in domestic service, massage/beauty parlours or in prostitution. To explain their decision to go abroad for 3 or 4 years, these women seem to have no personal objectives, tending only to mention their children’s economic needs. However, they often do not return to China after their migration goals are fulfilled and a majority of them have stayed more than ten years in France. A diachronic point of view shows that their concerns for their child evolve through the years: from saving for their child’s education, to supporting them as they enter professional life in China or buying an apartment for their marriage. Why do these women only highlight their children’s needs and never mention their own expectations in the migration? What is the link between their divorce and their decision to leave China? Why is their attempt to recover the status of a good person (haoren) tied to the reaffirmation of their social role as a “good mother”?

Author

• Florence Levy, EHESS France, Neuchatel University Switzerland