Masculinity at Its Margins: Migrant Construction Work in China

Most ethnographic literature on migrant labor in China has addressed factory work, highlighting the role of manufacturing jobs in shaping new consumer desires and future expectations for the predominantly female migrant workforce. This paper contrasts manufacturing with construction, an industry where physical building labor is dominated by rural male migrant labor. For women in factories, urban work often serves as a tool for challenging traditional rural gender structures. By contrast, for young unmarried migrant men from marginal rural areas, urban wages tend to sustain, rather than disrupt, gendered expectations and desires for continuation of traditional family and community structures.