Work, Gender and Social Integration in a Migrant Quarter of Shanghai

Tania ANGELOFF Université Paris Dauphine, France

1er avril 2011, Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica

    Taking as a starting-point a qualitative survey carried out between June and November 2007 in an old migrant quarter that was in the process of being demolished, men and women aged between 17 and 82 were questioned in-depth on their life histories, with particular attention paid to their relationship to work. The aim of the research was initially to raise the issue of lines of segmentation and social and geographical – even ethnic – inequalities – in relation to employment from a gender perspective. It emerges that the difference between men and women alone cannot explain inequalities in success and integration. A generational approach centered on the women interviewed enabled us to shed light on individual trajectories within a wider historical context, sometimes refuting certain preconceived ideas on such or such a period in history, which though bloody or violent overall, paradoxically had emancipating and integrating effects in terms of employment for certain migrant women.