Inequality in Love: Romance and Intimacy among China's Young Migrant Workers DP150103544

Funding: 2015: $42,200
2016: $45,600
2017: $95,456

Project Member(s): Sun, W.

Funding or Partner Organisation: Australian Research Council (ARC Discovery Projects)

Start year: 2015

Summary: China¿s global ascendancy seems unstoppable. But its economic reforms have made China one of the world¿s most unequal countries. To a significant extent, the nation¿s stability ¿ and global prosperity ¿ now rest precariously on the goodwill of more than 260 million mostly disadvantaged rural migrant workers, and how they feel and act. But how do they experience inequality? How does inequality shape their most intimate feelings? This project will demonstrate unequivocally that love and romance are far from `trivial¿ for these individuals ¿ that studying them is not a retreat to the merely personal, but rather promises vital new ways of understanding inequality.

Publications:

Sun, W 2020, 'Consumption Plus Love: Inequality, Domestic Utopia, and China’s New Politics of the Future', Modern China, vol. 46, no. 1, pp. 49-78.
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Sun, W 2019, 'Inequality in Mobility: The Pursuit of Conjugal Intimacy for China’s Rural Migrant Women in Industrial Shenzhen', Journal of Intercultural Studies, vol. 40, no. 3, pp. 302-317.
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Sun, W 2019, 'Rural migrants and their marital problems: discourses of governing and knowledge production in China', Critical Policy Studies, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 43-60.
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Sun, W 2018, 'Romancing the vulnerable in contemporary China: Love on the assembly line and the cultural politics of inequality', China Information, vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 69-87.
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Sun, W 2017, 'Bridal photos and diamond rings: the inequality of romantic consumption in China', The Journal of Chinese Sociology, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 1-17.
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Sun, W The Guardian 2017, 'My parents say hurry up and find a girl': China's millions of lonely 'leftover men'.

Sun, W 2016, 'Gender, sexuality and transgressive publics: A special forum', Communication and the Public, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 244-244.
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Sun, W 2016, 'Public intimacy: Contestation over young Chinese rural migrants’ love life', Communication and the Public, vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 263-268.
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Keywords: China, gender, rural migrants

FOR Codes: Expanding Knowledge through Studies of Human Society, Culture, Gender, Sexuality, Recreation, Consumption and Everyday Life, Gender studies, Recreation and leisure activities (excl. sport and exercise), Expanding knowledge in Indigenous studies, Expanding knowledge in human society

Acknowledgement of Country

UTS acknowledges the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the Boorooberongal people of the Dharug Nation, the Bidiagal people and the Gamaygal people, upon whose ancestral lands our university stands. We would also like to pay respect to the Elders both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for these lands.