"Left-Behind" Children: How China Turns a Social Problem into Moral Failings Published in the China Story Blog, Australian Centre on China in the World
In June 2015, the news of four siblings who committed suicide in poverty-stricken Guizhou Province shocked China and exposed to the world the hardship of "left-behind" childrenchildren who stay behind in rural villages while their parents move to cities for work. My recent article in the journal Current Sociology argues that the persistence of this problem is rooted in the state's neoliberal-authoritarian approach towards governing the rural migrant population. The hukou system enables the urban local governments to keep rural migrants as a "floating population" rather than settlers, which necessitates rural migrant families' splithousehold living arrangements. At the same time, mainstream media and public policies pathologize social issues in this population.