The state, the migrant labor regime, and maiden workers in China

Recent research (re)emphasizing the role of the state and the institutional perspective generally neglects socialist economies. At the same time, feminist studies on migration rarely focus on mobility in transitional contexts. Informed by these two bodies of literature, this paper examines how the post-Mao state in China has fostered a migrant labor regime and the incorporation of young, single rural women, dubbed “maiden workers,” into urban work. I argue that the Chinese state has taken on a developmentalist mandate and by doing so has also transformed gender relations in the peasant household and in the urban labor market. By analyzing narratives from a survey of peasant households in Sichuan and Anhui, I emphasize the central role of state policies and institutions, especially the household registration (hukou) system, in channeling peasants to specific sectors and jobs and creating an exploitative migrant labor regime. The incorporation of maiden workers into migrant work and the relative absence of married women in the rural–urban migrant labor force, reflect interactions between institutional controls, gender ideology, and demands of the migrant labor regime. An approach that integrates gender and institutional perspectives is useful because it foregrounds the state’s role in constructing differences based on hukou status, locality, class, and gender.