Law and Discourse in the Creation of Spatial, Corporeal Hierarchies
Stephanie Lim, University of Toronto

Low-cost industrial and domestic labour, sourced through large-scale internal migration of rural workers from largely rural interior provinces to industrial coastal cities, is widely understood to be the foundation of the expansion of the modern Chinese economy. Induced by Deng Xiaoping-era (late 1970s to early 1990s) economic reforms, large-scale rural to urban migration has been characterized as “one of the most prominent demographic events in twentieth-century China.”[1] [2] Presently, it is estimated that there are approximately “270 million rural-to-urban migrants” within China, “a significant proportion” of whom are women. [3][4] In larger cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Chengdu etc. women account for half of total migrant populations. This proportionate share is even higher among the most mobile migrant group, young women aged between 15 and 29. [5]

Migrant female workers are distinct from migrant men in that they tend to be unmarried and primarily concentrated in the service sector, including restaurants, hotels, retail stores and domestic work. [6] Subsequently, female migrant workers occupy a distinct space in official state narratives. Continued rural-to-urban migration is imperative for maintaining state modernization and economic growth goals. [7] However, continued blurring of social stratification conflicts with the state interest of preserving the established social hierarchy. The Chinese state balances these two conflicting interests through the use of the hukou residence system as well as intangible operators such as suzhi (social quality) and neng jianghua (eloquence); in order to limit the ability of female migrant workers from attaining full social standing in their recipient locales and working spaces. [8][9] Through an examination of Beijing rural-to-urban baomu (female domestic worker) this paper aims to demonstrate how the hukou residence system and state-backed intangible operators function to interpellate certain female bodies as rural and subsequently less deserving of full social standing.

The hukou residence system forces rural-to-urban baomu into legal precarity and consequently makes them more susceptible to identifying as “rural” and less deserving of full social standing. Law is discursive and its function is to guard accumulations of wealth and poverty; as well as to define subjects’ rights, duties and obligations. [10] Using this interpretation of law, the hukou residence system is the primary legal mode through which the Chinese state determines what services are owed to certain bodies. The categories themselves are a “means of control, designed to confine people within rigid boundaries and contain what possibilities they can have”. [11] Primarily divided in a two-tier system between “rural” and “urban” hukou, the hukou system “ties provision of social services to place, so that access to state-subsidized education, housing, healthcare, and pensions is not guaranteed if someone leaves their officially registered hometown.” [12] [13] Hence, in choosing to migrate rural-to-urban baomu become legally precarious, as they are unable to claim entitlement to state social services. Furthermore, in removing baomu from their indigenous social circles they lack the traditional means of seeking social services such as education, housing healthcare etc. through established social ties or guanxi. Subsequently, they become socially precarious in addition to legally precarious. This precarious state of existence allows for an abundance of low-cost domestic labour, which considering “China’s export and construction sectors are unimaginable in their current form without wage repression, theft and avoidance of social insurance payments”, is in the best interest of Chinese industry. [14] [15] Furthermore, “these powerful groups will do everything in their capacity to ensure that they do not have to pay full price for labor.” [16]

However, regardless of the social precarity of living as a rural-to-urban migrant worker, the state ensures that potential migrants perceive migration as appealing. The state does this in order to ensure the consistent flow of migrants to urban areas in order to maintain industries, which depend on low-cost migrant labour. By no coincidence, extra-large cities such as Beijing and Shanghai “are the most economically dynamic and offer the best social services”, and hence naturally attract migrants searching to escape rural poverty. [17] However, in addition to this appeal, the hukou system attempts to be perceived as meritocratic, by allowing for certain “elite human talent” to change hukou as long as they meet a certain point-based requirement. [18] However, in order to meet the hukou requirements for extra-large cities, applicants “must not have a criminal record, and cannot have violated the birth control policy. Additionally, they must provide leases, proof of social insurance payments, and labor contracts from within the receiving area for previous years”. [19] As such, regardless of how accessible the hukou system attempts to appear, members of the working class such as baomu, due to living in “informal housing or have faced forced demolition” and having been “employed in places where the boss doesn’t pay social insurance” will never qualify to live in or possess the hukou for extra-large cities such as Beijing and Shanghai. [20]

Furthermore, it must be noted that regardless of the stark “rural” versus “urban” dichotomy in the hukou system, not all rural migrants are the same. In contemporary Chinese imagination, “rural” bodies are seen as inherently absent in suzhi. They are understood as poor, lacking manners, poorly educated, the basis for rural China’s failure to modernize, and largely motivated by socio-economic factors. [21] However “not all migrants are from poor households or areas.” [22] Nevertheless, “employees with rural hukou status, no matter how similar their jobs are to those held by urban workers, are still classified as ‘peasant workers’ (workers who come from rural areas) and thereby are not entitled to the many labour rights and benefits enjoyed by employees with urban hukou.” [23] Furthermore, the “rural” versus “urban” dichotomy in the hukou system is reproduced in other aspects of contemporary Chinese life such as the media, and functions to further promote rural-to-urban migration. In fact for many migrants, the “attraction of city life, broadcast as exceptional and exotic by both earlier migrants returning to the village and the media is a primary motivator in their decision to migrate. A related motivator is the desire for material things and luxury items available only to urban workers.” [24]

State-supported discourse on the superiority of urban life and urban bodies over rural life and bodies ultimately propagates the notion that regardless of profession or wealth accumulation, unless a person occupies an urban space he or she will always be backward. However, once they migrate, workers exist in a precarious state due to their inability to claim social services due to their lack of an appropriate hukou. Furthermore, despite having migrated to urban locales and potentially possessing urban commodities such as a car, because of their rural origins, migrant bodies continue to be understood as rural, having low suzhi and subsequently less deserving of fair treatment and wages. [25] As such, even though it is theoretically possible to change hukou and to accumulate high levels of suzhi, in contemporary China this possibility is rarely ever realized. Discourse on suzhi is especially relevant in the context of the interpellation of rural-to-urban baomu bodies and the relative value of their labour.

Notions of suzhi in contemporary China with regards to rural-to-urban baomu function: to interpellate baomu as bodies undeserving of full social standing in their recipient locales and deserving of lower wages due to their rurality; to prevent the formation of class consciousness and discourage potential resistance to state discourse on rurality and rural bodies. “Suzhi is hardly a neologism, but it acquired new discursive power when it became conjoined with the idea of population (renkou) in the economic reforms that began in 1976. […] Anxieties about the low quality of the Chinese people entered into the culture fever (wenhua re) of the late 1980s, in which intellectuals debated the cultural impediments to modernization. […]”[26] In contemporary discourse “suzhi’s sense has been extended from a discourse of backwardness and development (the quality of the masses) to encompass the minute social distinctions defining a “person of quality” in practices of consumption and the incitement of a middle-class desire for social mobility. The discourse of suzhi appears most elaborated in relation to two figures: the body of the rural migrant, which exemplifies suzhi in its apparent absence, and the body of the urban, middle-class only child, which is fetishized as a site for the accumulation of the very dimensions of suzhi wanting in its ‘other.’”[27]

Suzhi is particularly relevant in the context of interpellation of rural-to-urban baomu compared to male migrant workers due to the nature of domestic work. Owing to the fact that baomu work inside the home and in close proximity with predominantly white-collar middle-class urbanites, they are expected to conduct themselves in the same manner as an urbanite and are held to the same etiquette standard. [28] The baomu is expected to “have a closed body, free from odors and fluids and the reality of their bodily functions” regardless of the fact that the baomu’s occupation requires her to routinely clean the bodily fluids of the employers they care for. [29] Furthermore, irrespective of the demands of her employment, the baomu could also never be on equal social standing as her employer due to her rurality. “For urban employers of baomu […] the baomu’s residence in their most intimate home-space poses an especially serious threat to urban notions of distinction from, and superiority over, the rural. The “low-suzhi” baomu body has thus become the site whereby rural-urban difference is (re)marked, urban sense of superiority (re)affirmed, and urbanites’ right of access to cheap labor assured and asserted”. [30] As a result, the baomu is in a state of constantly striving to attain higher levels of suzhi; however due to her rurality she will never actually attain high levels of suzhi, lest she threaten her employer’s social standing. Ironically, a significant portion of baomu move to extra-large cities such as Beijing drawn to the idea of attaining higher levels of suzhi and becoming an urbanite. [31] If these baomu hypothetically accumulate suzhi to the point that they are equal in suzhi as their employers, not only do they threaten the established social hierarchy they also become entitled to higher wages. In doing so, however they are too expensive to employ and must return home, creating an irrational cycle of migration. Hence, because the Chinese domestic service industry is so intensely female dominated, discourse on suzhi becomes particularly gendered and has become an intangible operator specifically targeted at interpellating rural-to-urban female migrant workers.

In addition to serving as an additional distinguishing factor between employers and baomu, suzhi functions to differentiate the value of labour performed by certain bodies. According to contemporary Chinese discourse, because rural bodies possess less suzhi than urban bodies, they are entitled to lower wages even when performing the same labour. This can be seen in an examination of justifications given for the wage gap between rural and urban, migrant and local baomu. Local baomu “tend to be older, more responsible, and more experienced with household work, including child care. They are also thought to be more capable of modern household tasks such as operating an automatic washing machine or programming a microwave.” [32] However, most importantly, these baomu are local and have greater insider status than do rural baomu. Rural baomu are dually discriminated against due to their rurality as well as their outsider status. “Rurality is usually blamed for lack of civility, manners, hygienic habits, and scientific knowledge of housekeeping, but it is the outsider status of the maid that most commonly triggers urban anxieties about children being abducted, money stolen, and elderly people being abused. This is why some urbanites feel safer engaging relatives from rural areas as maids or recruiting rural maids through “word of mouth” rather than “blindly” hiring unknown maids from the countryside.” [33]

Ironically, although perceived absence of suzhi is the source behind the social devaluation of rural-to-urban baomu. Baomu themselves reproduce and reify state-backed discourse on suzhi as well as ascribe social value based on levels of suzhi to their peers as well as other rural residents. Local urban baomu, notwithstanding the fact that they share the same occupation and perform the same labour as rural-to-urban baomu, form value hierarchies based on perceived levels of suzhi; often complaining about “the low suzhi of waidiren (outsiders) as a way of accounting for their own unsatisfactory situation—placing blame on the outsiders who have taken their jobs—or in order to claim an innate place-based superiority despite their own marginal position.” [34] Local baomu make these claims of cultural superiority by virtue of being an urban native and therefore having inherently more suzhi than a rural-to-urban baomu. Regardless of whether suzhi is presented as a quality than can be accumulated over a lifetime, urban bodies according to popular discourse have more suzhi from birth. Urbanites are not alone in creating these hierarchies. Rural-to-urban baomu create similar hierarchies between themselves and rural residents from their place of origin. They attempt to distinguish themselves from other rural residents by highlighting their “disassociation from land and farming altogether”, as well as by actively performing “modernity from many points of view.” [35] For example, a rural-to-urban baomu might begin to speak differently; “they also eat and dress differently […] A villager in Hebei province also described in detail the fashionable pointy heels worn by migrant girls when they visited home: ‘The tips of the shoes are like screw drivers… Those migrant girls all have a pair of that kind of shoes and they all wear them when they come home.” [36] “Through their ‘urbanized’ appearance and lifestyle, migrant women send out a clear message that they are different from their fellow villagers, and have renounced their relationship with land, agricultural work and peasantry.” [37] Hence, suzhi is an extremely potent intangible operator that functions to reproduce itself among interactions between employers and employees; local baomu and rural-to-urban baomu; migrant returnees and other rural residents. It allows for the creation of auxiliary hierarchies instead of the cultivation of class-consciousness from shared economic marginalization or occupation.

Furthermore, discourse on suzhi controls the modes of resistance available to rural-to-urban baomu and ultimately forces them to reproduce state-backed discourse on suzhi. For example, state supported organizations for migrant worker empowerment exist. However, these organizations attempt to encourage migrant women to struggle for their legal rights through reiterating, “state discourse directed at producing a “docile, disciplined, and cheap” labor force for transnational capital”; ultimately creating state-sponsored and ineffective resistance. Within these centers, baomu are taught that it is worse to be “lacking in suzhi”, than it is to be unskilled or uneducated. [38] [39] Moreover, they are constantly reminded of the importance of suzhi as women and as migrant workers, preventing them from ever engaging in radical resistance.

In conclusion, legal forces in the form of the hukou residence system as well as intangible operators in the form of suzhi work in conjunction to interpellate rural-to-urban baomu bodies as less deserving of full social standing. Popular discourse dictates that urban-life and urban bodies are superior to rural bodies and rural life, prompting mass migration to urban areas. However once settled in urban areas, rural-to-urban baomu bodies are dually limited and methodized by their lack of appropriate hukou as well as their supposed lack of suzhi. Furthermore, suzhi specifically functions as a means of creating rifts between employers and employees; local baomu and rural-to-urban baomu; as well as between rural-to-urban baomu and other residents from their place of origin. Finally, suzhi functions to limit the modes of resistance available to migrant women. Official state-backed migrant worker advocacy organizations promote a discourse in which women are expected to promote worker’s rights but only through state supported discourse at producing a “docile, disciplined, and cheap” labor force. In conclusion, rural-to-urban baomu are interpellated using the hukou residence system as well as popular discourse on suzhi to understand themselves as inferior to urban bodies and their labour as less valuable.

Footnotes

[1] Diana Fu. 2009. “A Cage of Voices: Producing and Doing Dagongmei in Contemporary China.” Modern China 35 (5): 53
[2] Zai Liang, (2001) “The age of migration in China.” Population and Development Rev. 27, 3 (Sep.): 499, 518.
[3] Eli Friedman. “The Urbanization of the Chinese Working Class Comments.” Jacobin. 1 Oct. 2014. Web. 18 Apr. 2015.
[4] Man Guo, Nelson W. S. Chow, and Lawrence A. Palinkas. “CIRCULAR MIGRATION AND LIFE COURSE OF FEMALE DOMESTIC WORKERS IN BEIJING.” Asian Population Studies 7, no. 1 (March 1, 2011): 51. doi:10.1080/17441730.2011.544905.
[5] Ibid., 51-52.
[6] Shen Tan. (2004) “Leaving home and coming back: experiences of rural migrant women.” Pp. 216. in Together with Migrants: A UNESCO Project for Poverty Education. Beijing: UNESCO.
[7] Eli Friedman. “The Urbanization of the Chinese Working Class Comments.” Jacobin. 1 Oct. 2014. Web. 18 Apr. 2015.
[8] Wanning, Sun 2009. “Suzhi on the Move: Body, Place, and Power.” positions: east asia cultures critique 17, no. 3 (2009): 627.
[9] Diana Fu. 2009. “A Cage of Voices: Producing and Doing Dagongmei in Contemporary China.” Modern China 35 (5): 530.
[10] Foucault via Clark, 2015c. Lecture.
[11] Jijiao Zhang. “Shifting Two-tiered Boundaries of Belonging: A Study of the Hukou System and Rural–Urban Migration in China,” in L. Pries. Shifting Boundaries of Belonging and New Migration Dynamics in Europe and China, Palgrave Macmillan. (2013) page 138
[12] Ibid., 139
[13] As well as industries such as domestic work which exist due to the wealth gathered from these industries
[14] Eli Friedman. “The Urbanization of the Chinese Working Class Comments.” Jacobin. 1 Oct. 2014. Web. 18 Apr. 2015.
[15] Ibid
[16] Ibid
[17] Ibid
[18] Ibid
[19] Ibid
[20] Ibid
[21] Ann Anagnost,. “The Corporeal Politics of Quality ( Suzhi ).” Public Culture 16, no. 2 (2004): 190.
[22] Man Guo, Nelson W. S. Chow, and Lawrence A. Palinkas. “CIRCULAR MIGRATION AND LIFE COURSE OF FEMALE DOMESTIC WORKERS IN BEIJING.” Asian Population Studies 7, no. 1 (March 1, 2011): 55. doi:10.1080/17441730.2011.544905.
[23] Jijiao Zhang. “Shifting Two-tiered Boundaries of Belonging: A Study of the Hukou System and Rural–Urban Migration in China,” in L. Pries. Shifting Boundaries of Belonging and New Migration Dynamics in Europe and China, Palgrave Macmillan. (2013) pages 147.
[24] Xiaochu Hu. “China’s New Generation Rural-Urban Migrants: Migration Motivation and Migration Patterns” Migration Information Source, 2012 (January 2, 2012).
[25] Man Guo, Nelson W. S. Chow, and Lawrence A. Palinkas. “CIRCULAR MIGRATION AND LIFE COURSE OF FEMALE DOMESTIC WORKERS IN BEIJING.” Asian Population Studies 7, no. 1 (March 1, 2011): 58. doi:10.1080/17441730.2011.544905.
[26] Ann Anagnost,. “The Corporeal Politics of Quality ( Suzhi ).” Public Culture 16, no. 2 (2004): 190.
[27] Ibid
[28] Wanning Sun. 2009. “Suzhi on the Move: Body, Place, and Power.” positions: east asia cultures critique 17, no. 3 (2009): 623.
[29] Ibid.
[30] Ibid., 627.
[31] Man Guo, Nelson W. S. Chow, and Lawrence A. Palinkas. “CIRCULAR MIGRATION AND LIFE COURSE OF FEMALE DOMESTIC WORKERS IN BEIJING.” Asian Population Studies 7, no. 1 (March 1, 2011): 56. doi:10.1080/17441730.2011.544905.
[32] Wanning Sun. 2009. “Suzhi on the Move: Body, Place, and Power.” positions: east asia cultures critique 17, no. 3 (2009): 630.
[33] Ibid. 632
[34] Ibid. 631
[35] Nana Zhang. “Performing Identities: Women in Rural–urban Migration in Contemporary China.” Geoforum 54, no. 0 (July 2014): 21.
[36] Ibid
[37] Ibid
[38] Diana Fu. 2009. “A Cage of Voices: Producing and Doing Dagongmei in Contemporary China.” Modern China 35 (5): 529.
[39] Ibid. 549

Works Cited

Althusser, Louis. 1971. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” excerpt from Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, Ben Brewster (translator), NY: Monthly Review Press, pp. 127-86.

Anagnost, Ann. “The Corporeal Politics of Quality ( Suzhi ).” Public Culture 16, no. 2 (2004): 189–208.

Fu, Diana. 2009. “A Cage of Voices: Producing and Doing Dagongmei in Contemporary China.” Modern China 35 (5): 527-561.

Friedman, Eli. “The Urbanization of the Chinese Working Class Comments.” Jacobin. 1 Oct. 2014. Web. 18 Apr. 2015.

Guo, Man, Nelson W. S. Chow, and Lawrence A. Palinkas. “CIRCULAR MIGRATION AND LIFE COURSE OF FEMALE DOMESTIC WORKERS IN BEIJING.” Asian Population Studies 7, no. 1 (March 1, 2011): 51–67. doi:10.1080/17441730.2011.544905.

Hu, Xiaochu. “China’s New Generation Rural-Urban Migrants: Migration Motivation and Migration Patterns” Migration Information Source, 2012 (January 2, 2012).

Liang Zai, (2001) “The age of migration in China.” Population and Development Rev. 27, 3 (Sep.): 499-524.

Sun, Wanning. 2009. “Suzhi on the Move: Body, Place, and Power.” positions: east asia cultures critique 17, no. 3 (2009): 617-642.

Tan, Shen. (2004) “Leaving home and coming back: experiences of rural migrant women.” Pp. 216-21 in Together with Migrants: A UNESCO Project for Poverty Education. Beijing: UNESCO.

Zhang Jijiao. “Shifting Two-tiered Boundaries of Belonging: A Study of the Hukou System and Rural–Urban Migration in China,” in L. Pries. Shifting Boundaries of Belonging and New Migration Dynamics in Europe and China, Palgrave Macmillan. (2013) pages 136–163

Zhang, Nana. “Performing Identities: Women in Rural–urban Migration in Contemporary China.” Geoforum 54, no. 0 (July 2014): 17–27.