Migrating to the City in North West China: Young Rural Women’s Empowerment

China has one of the largest internal migrant populations of the world today, one third of them are estimated to be women. This paper, part of a long-term study, reports on young women migrants from remote villages of North West China who have only recently joined the “floating population” in the urbanization transition. These young female migrants have often been described as multiply deprived. Our approach differs in that we view young migrant women as capable agents and explore what they are able to do and be under admittedly severe constraints and dilemmas. We found that labor migration provided them with resources that they converted to protections and opportunities associated with obtaining paid work, maintaining close-knit beneficial social networks, enacting religious norms and behaviors. Their enhanced instrumental and constitutive capabilities include financial independence, flourishing aspirations, personal agency, remove from patriarchal confines, and personal well-being. This study provides a window into an under-reported, yet substantial demographic transition that constitutes gendered social change enacted by rural young women caught up in the maelstrom of the Chinese urbanization boom.