#2 Zhenwei Wang, "Kinship across distances: Gender, generat…d class dynamics in Chinese translocal families" (upcoming)

00:00:00: (automatically generated) How can people continue to feel, demonstrate and fulfill their family responsibilities when they are not living together?

00:00:08: This is where the idea of kining helps us.

00:00:11: It draws attention to everyday practices through which people maintain family relationships across distance.

00:00:19: You're listening to the Bielefeld Anthrobook Podcast, featuring new and classic books in anthropology with authors who are based at Bielefed University or guest scholars.

00:00:34: I am Lana Elmaning a student of Sociology

00:00:38: and Producer of this podcast.

00:00:42: Chen Wei-Wang is a postdoc researcher at Heidelberg University Center for Ivoral American Studies, funded by the Margarete von Wrenge Jr.

00:00:52: Professor Programme.

00:00:54: She earned her PhD in Sociology from Bielefeld University and her research focuses on migration, digitalization effects and care of China in Ivorals America.

00:01:08: Our host, Yukun Sun is a doctoral candidate at Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology funded by that scholarship.

00:01:18: Her research focuses on digital labor and moral economy in contemporary China.

00:01:25: Thank you so much.

00:01:26: Welcome Zhong Wei.

00:01:27: Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today to talk about your upcoming new book, Kinship Across Distances – Gender Generation and Class Dynamics in Chinese Translocal Families.

00:01:41: Based on multi-sided ethnography in Hangzhou and surrounding towns The book offers a comprehensive exploration of how families whose members are into migration provide care, sustain meaningful connections and construct family relations across space & time through many practices.

00:02:05: I'd like to start with how you came into this project in the first place.

00:02:10: Could you tell us a bit about your own intellectual and personal journey that led you to Hangzhou and automatically to this book on translocal families partly based there?

00:02:23: Thank You.

00:02:25: Well, the way I came to this project is very much connected with my childhood experiences in China.

00:02:32: Over the past few decades, China has experienced a tremendous transformation.

00:02:38: Transportation infrastructure has developed rapidly and people's mobility have become easier than before.

00:02:48: Many institutional restrictions on mobility were gradually relaxed after the reform and opening up period.

00:02:55: For example, The old system of introduction letters.

00:02:58: it was previously restricted people's movement It now disappeared making large-scale internal migration possible.

00:03:07: While I personally grew up during this period of transformation i was born in a village In the nineteen nineties And both of my parents were rural too, urban migrants.

00:03:19: They worked in cities but returned to our village regularly.

00:03:23: So as a child I lived with my grandparents and experienced what is often called left-behind childhood.

00:03:30: However My experience does not match the common image of left behind children that i often encountered In either public discussions or in academic pieces.

00:03:45: Many journalists and scholars portray left behind children as vulnerable, as lonely.

00:03:53: But this is not what I experienced in my childhood.

00:03:57: For me it was just a simply ordinary life.

00:04:08: I passed a provincial level selective examination and moved to the Provincial Capital, Hangzhou.

00:04:21: To attend quite elite school there, Hongzhou Foreign Language School which is one of most prestigious secondary schools in the country.

00:04:29: at that time And i believe also now Suddenly I entered another form of translocal family life.

00:04:36: I myself became a migrant who had left home living far away from my parents My village.

00:04:42: so In different stages of my life, I experienced both sides of the migration.

00:04:49: First as someone who stayed behind and later as someone moved away.

00:04:55: This rupture between personal experiences in academic or let's say public narratives shaped by intellectual curiosity It drives me to question many assumptions people often make about migration About translocal families.

00:05:12: For example, in my book I challenge that migrant is not a fixed category.

00:05:18: People shift their roles between movers and stayers at different stages of their life.

00:05:32: flow multi-directionally within the web of care they are engaged with.

00:05:36: However, I also want to emphasize that my personal story was only the starting point for this book.

00:05:42: The more i spent in the field ,the more time i was there .The More I realized That My own experience Was one tiny part Of the social political transformation In contemporary China.

00:05:55: My background is quite different from many of my research participants My interlocutors.

00:06:00: I come from a relatively privileged position.

00:06:04: Although, From a rural village?

00:06:06: I had access to good education and have never worried about my next meal.

00:06:11: Many of the people that i met during my field work faced very different challenges.

00:06:16: Their concerns are sometimes about survival economic insecurity so Very different than mine.

00:06:23: Ethnographic research, let's say also changed my own understanding.

00:06:27: It challenged me to move beyond my personal memories and see the much more complicated realities of migration in contemporary China.

00:06:39: My own experience helped me ask this very first question but answers came from listening carefully.

00:06:45: The whole process was a way of rethinking my own experience, but also a way to understand the broader social transformation that China has gone through over the last thirty or forty years since the marketization reform in nineteen

00:07:03: seventy-nine.

00:07:03: As you mentioned, such family life is underpinned by the broader social political transformation in contemporary China reflecting the latter as well.

00:07:14: I want to recap social and institutional changes during recent years with Briefly speaking, although people migrated within the country along with marketization reform China's Household Registration System known as Hukou system.

00:07:35: As part of institutional laxies from socialist period restricted internal migrants to relocate in other places easily and tied welfare entitlements closely.

00:07:50: But you mentioned in the first chapter that HuCo system has changed a lot.

00:07:56: Rather than straightforward exclusion, we now see newly selective inclusion mechanism based on point-based HuCo transfer systems.

00:08:06: Could explain more about new point-base HuCo Transfer System and why it remains keeping families living apart?

00:08:20: whether people can move or not, but also whether they can settle and access the same social rights in places where they migrated to.

00:08:29: The point-based transfer system allows migrants apply for a local hookah based on accumulated points while these points usually consider factors such as education employment social insurance contributions skills economic contribution, so on and so forth.

00:08:48: So in other words cities are more likely to include migrants who are seen as economically valuable or highly skilled.

00:08:57: This selective inclusion continues to share family separation In very concrete ways.

00:09:03: One important example is children's education.

00:09:07: The point-based hookah system creates a hierarchy of educational access among Children living the same city.

00:09:14: at the top are children with local hukou and their parents also have a local huku.

00:09:19: They can choose, they have the strongest entitlement to public education.

00:09:25: The second tier include migrant-children whose parents accumulated relatively high points And consider talents.

00:09:32: In many cases ,they can also chose among different schools because number of available places in public school is often larger than the number for children.

00:09:42: but There is also a larger third group, the migrant families' migrant children with limited points.

00:09:49: These parents their children may only be able to enter schools where there are remaining places Only after local children and more advantaged migrant children have been accommodated.

00:10:00: Their access to urban education therefore much more uncertain And dependent on availability rather than entitlement.

00:10:09: Because of these unequal educational opportunities, many migrant parents make a very difficult but strategic decision.

00:10:17: They migrate without their children or sometimes they also send their children back to the hometown for schooling in order.

00:10:26: At the same time, I do not portray these families only as victims of hookah system.

00:10:34: People actively negotiate this constraints.

00:10:38: they make strategic decisions about where to live Where children should be raised?

00:10:42: Where They Should Be Educated.

00:10:44: The process of negotiating with institutional barriers and To plan for best For their Children is already a way Of caring And doing family.

00:10:56: Let's zoom in the concept of doing family, you said just now.

00:11:00: Although the title of this book is Kinship Across Distances You used that term anymore to unpack.

00:11:08: the translocal families in contemporary China adopt practices To maintain their kinship ties from afar.

00:11:16: It seems that family isn't a static concept it not fixed but based on continuous process.

00:11:25: What does Kining mean and why you chose this term in your book?

00:11:29: How could Kining help us think about

00:11:32: families?".

00:11:33: Well, I use Kining rather than simply talking about kinship.

00:11:38: It is because i want to emphasize that family isn't something people are born into.

00:11:44: it's something they continuously create through everyday practices.

00:11:50: The concept of Kining was originally developed by anthropologist Signa Harwell, who used to study adopted.

00:11:58: parents and children create kin relations.

00:12:01: And following the studies by Janet Casten David Schneider yeah...and also sociologist David Morgan has also similar studies.

00:12:10: Harwell's work shows that becoming family is a process.

00:12:14: people actively transform social relationships into meaningful, keen relationships.

00:12:20: For my research the concept is particularly useful because trans-local families face a very special challenge.

00:12:28: People are family members but they're not always physically together.

00:12:32: When parents work in the city while children or their elder parents remain at home terms geographical distance creates a question How can people continue to feel to demonstrate and fulfill their family responsibilities when they are not living together.

00:12:49: This is where the idea of kining helps us, it draws attention to everyday practices through which people maintain family relationships across distance.

00:12:59: In my book I look at four major forms or strategies for distant kining The in-person visits, monetary transfers Storytelling about parental migration digital monitoring through smart cameras.

00:13:16: So distance creates challenges but it also produces new practices, new responsibilities and new forms of intimacy.

00:13:26: Thank you so much.

00:13:27: The four major forms or strategies of distant keening You mentioned are super interesting.

00:13:33: Could you briefly walk us through these four strategies just to give listeners a sense Of what they look like in practice?

00:13:41: Yes, absolutely.

00:13:43: These four strategies are really the four main ways I observed people doing family during my fieldwork.

00:13:50: The first is in-person visits.

00:13:53: Although family members live apart most of their time They make tremendous efforts to reunite during festivals—the traditional Chinese festivals especially and during holidays or other important occasions like children's birthday, elder parents' birthdays something.

00:14:11: The second is monetary transfer.

00:14:14: Remittance is not only financial support, I would like to say it's a moral battleground.

00:14:20: who contributes more?

00:14:22: Who sacrifices more and has the authority To make decisions?

00:14:27: how use money transferred back home?

00:14:30: These are all struggles concerning intergenerational and gender hierarchies And also norms that order these.

00:14:38: I illustrate their fights by showing how people use different local terms to define remittance in order to justify the role of family.

00:14:48: This chapter is very interesting whether money is called 生活费, so living expenses or 孝敬浅, The Money Adults Children Give To Their Parents as a way of showing their filial piety Or simply 红包 maybe a more known term.

00:15:04: in China studies and it is money inside of red envelope that's given to other people as gift.

00:15:11: I think the readers will enjoy reading this chapter, It's super interesting!

00:15:15: i highly recommend it.

00:15:17: And third form is storytelling.

00:15:21: I show you how maternal and paternal grandparents tell parental migration differently To stay behind child How these stories shape children's distant relationship with their migrant parents and how they perceive their parental absence.

00:15:39: Finally, there is also a chapter about digital monitoring the fourth strategy especially through smartphones and smart home cameras.

00:15:49: these technologies nowadays allow migrants to supervise their children doing homework distantly.

00:15:57: yet It draws on questions of constant availability, ubiquitous connectivity and issues about privacy.

00:16:05: So while these are all the strategies for distant keening they're not always harmonious.

00:16:12: like mentioned previously Keening is an ongoing process in which different family members have different expectations, different understandings of responsibility and sometimes they also have competing interests.

00:16:29: So doing family during distant kining is always a process of negotiating power relations within the family.

00:16:39: I really enjoyed reading your book and all chapters, details you mentioned.

00:16:45: Either the chapter about remittances how people define money in their own terms or other chapters.

00:16:54: I actually noticed that when you discuss the changes in gender, generational and class relations You started from the late imperial period.

00:17:05: Late Qing dynasty seriously taking the changes and laxies That happened before the establishment of People's Republic China into account.

00:17:16: How could we understand the persistence and continuities alongside such massive social transformations

00:17:28: in China?

00:17:46: and large-scale migration have all transformed almost every aspect of social life here, there.

00:17:53: But one thing I learned from my fieldwork is that people never experience these changes on a blank slate.

00:18:03: they interpret and negotiate new realities through ideas values and family relationships.

00:18:14: That's why I start from the late imperial period.

00:18:17: I wanted to show that todays family relations are not simply the product of marketization reform or socialism, they're results of several historical layers interacting with one another.

00:18:32: Late Imperial kinship socialist reform after nineteen forty nine and marketization since late nineteen seventies have all left their marks on how people understand gender, understand generation class and family responsibilities.

00:18:50: So my argument is while gender relations intergenerational relations ideas about parenting have all changed dramatically they are remarkable continuities.

00:19:04: expectations that women should show their more caregiving responsibilities remain very strong Until now, patriarchal ideas continue to influence where generations live and how care is organized.

00:19:18: And class inequalities have become even more significant in shaping how families can respond to migration.

00:19:26: My ethnography is trying show that people are constantly combining different moral frameworks when making everyday decisions.

00:19:35: They are navigating contemporary challenges with cultural resources that have accumulated over generations.

00:19:42: For me, this is why ethnography and history need to speak to each other.

00:19:48: Without History we cannot understand Why certain family practices persist.

00:19:53: But without Ethnography We can not see how these historical legacies Are continuously reinterpreted And reshaped in everyday living.

00:20:03: Yeah, absolutely.

00:20:05: Let's back to the detailed strategy you described in chapter.

00:20:11: I want to focus on the crucial finger of grandparents here.

00:20:16: I noticed that in the practice of storytelling, you demonstrated how grandparents gave narratives about their son and daughter-in-law to their granddaughter.

00:20:27: To deliberately establish their affective ties when parents are physically absent.

00:20:35: You argue this reflects way in which grandparents actively exert agency.

00:20:42: How could we understand grandparents as crucial fingers rather than merely substitute caregivers in today's Chinese family lives?

00:20:54: This is actually one of the findings that surprised me most during my fieldwork, when I read about translocal families.

00:21:08: Grandparents are often described as substitute parents or surrogate parents.

00:21:15: The assumption is that parents migrate for work and grandparents step in to take care of their children, but what I found was that grandparents do much more than simply replacing.

00:21:34: They don't position themselves as surrogate parents, they position themselfs as grandparents that mediate the child and their parent.

00:21:44: So through everyday conversations stories and every day interactions... ...they help children understand who their parents are why they left?

00:21:56: Why they're working far away And what kind of people there is.

00:22:01: I found storytelling particularly fascinating because it is such an ordinary practice that we often overlook.

00:22:09: Grandparents constantly tell stories about migrant parents, what they are doing in the city how hard they work How much they miss their children or why They cannot come home.

00:22:23: more often These stories help absent parents remain emotionally present in children's everyday lives.

00:22:32: At the same time, storytelling is never completely neutral.

00:22:37: Grandparents are not simply passing on information.

00:22:41: they interpret their events emphasize certain values and sometimes even construct tensions between parents and children.

00:22:51: In my book I show that one of most important tension to narrate parental absence, how the father's absence is different from the mother's absence and how a specific way of wording could shape their childrens' perspective or the child's perception of their parent's absence.

00:23:15: And shape that child's sense belonging which line of extended family.

00:23:22: So through storytelling The grandparents actually exercised there own agency.

00:23:28: So, more broadly this chapter asks us to rethink grandparents' role in contemporary Chinese families.

00:23:36: They are crucial actors on their own right instead of merely just surrogate parents.

00:23:42: Yeah I believe writers will love reading these chapters.

00:23:47: throughout the whole book you develop the key concept of multi-directionality to capture the mobility of people, money information and more essentially care behind within family members.

00:24:03: I found it's an interesting and important concept.

00:24:06: Before reading this book, the old impression in my mind is that migrants send money back to family members who are left behind – usually the elderly or children —to financially support their whole families.

00:24:20: but In Chapter Three like you mentioned before You distinguish different types of remittances including money from family members revealing that the direction of money flow is not always one way, same as information people and care.

00:24:40: Would you like to share the ways in which the concept of multi-directionality contributes what was missed by previous literature?

00:24:50: When we talk about migration and family there's often an implicit image of a mutual flow A provides care B B, eventually returns care to A but what I found in my research is much more complex.

00:25:08: Care is organized through a web of interrelated relations among different family members and across generations.

00:25:17: so let me give you an example grandparents may receive monetary support from their adult children who migrated to cities.

00:25:26: But they do not necessarily repay this monetary support directly to their children.

00:25:32: Instead, they provide childcare for their grandchildren feeding them helping with education taking care of the everyday living and loving them.

00:25:43: in this way The support that receive is transformed into another form of care directed towards not the adult Children but the grandchildren.

00:25:54: what may be even more revealing if that?

00:25:56: children who are raised by their uncles and aunts.

00:26:00: They may later repay this care but not necessarily to their uncle or aunt.

00:26:07: instead when they became adults, they might support the cousins who are children of their Uncle or Aunt.

00:26:14: so care does not return to original giver in a direct way.

00:26:19: it continues to circulate through family network.

00:26:23: This is why I use multi-directionality.

00:26:27: It allows us to see family care not as a series of individual transactions between A and B, but as dynamic circulation of different resources among multiple actors across generations.

00:26:44: It reminds me some my own experiences quite interesting.

00:26:48: Inspired by the content of your book, especially The Practice Of Digital Monitoring it described in chapter five I would like to pose a question that goes a little bit beyond the empirical timeframe.

00:27:04: As Chinese government actively promotes the development of artificial intelligence right now we could say The trend that tools like Doubao and DeepSick, the Chinese version of ChaiGPT are gradually embedded in everyday life.

00:27:22: Students turn to AI for homework advice.

00:27:26: Long-way old people turned to AI communication support.

00:27:32: Do you think growing use artificial intelligence challenges kinship ties?

00:27:42: Are there any continuities between cameras and smartphones you analyzed in chapter five at the newly emergent AI concerning digital technologies complicating experiences of translocal kidney?

00:27:58: Well,

00:27:59: this is a really fascinating question.

00:28:02: And I should say that goes beyond empirical scope for my book.

00:28:08: So what I'm going to share is more of a reflection myself than conclusions supported by any empirical evidence.

00:28:31: Today it is very common to hear people complaining that family members no longer talk with each other during the dinner because everyone is looking at their own smartphone.

00:28:41: I can imagine similar concerns emerging around artificial intelligence, older people may not talk to their migrant children as often because AI can always respond immediately and sometimes with warmer tones with much comforting words than their busy children can.

00:29:02: Likewise, parents may complain that their children ask AI for help or homework instead of asking them.

00:29:11: perhaps because you know AI can provide answers in a way that feels more patient less judgmental Or You Know In the form That is easier to accept by The Children But one Of the main argument in my book Is Technologies are never simply tools, rather they reflect and reshape the tensions, expectations or power struggles that already exist within family relationships.

00:29:43: Well take a smart camera.

00:29:45: I discussed in chapter five.

00:29:47: without cameras parents always supervise their children.

00:29:54: There has always been tensions between parental supervision and children's autonomy.

00:30:00: The cameras simply make these tensions more visible, allowing them to be enacted in new ways.

00:30:08: I think artificial intelligence may intensify various tensions.

00:30:13: similarly if children increasingly return to AI rather than their parents for advice we might need why children make that choice?

00:30:23: Why they do so.

00:30:25: Is it a way of negotiating or even challenging their parents' authority?

00:30:31: if AI and parents give different answers to the same question, whose advice would children trust?

00:30:38: how does artificial intelligence reshape children's dependence on independence in relation what and whom?

00:30:48: So I'd say AI is a new technology, but it's also a medium through which people negotiate care authority responsibility and intimacy within family relationships.

00:31:06: Absolutely true!

00:31:08: Before we finish our conversation today would you like to share what are working on now?

00:31:14: Does your next project grow out of this book, still surrounding migration and kinship?

00:31:21: Or does it take you somewhere else completely different.

00:31:26: In many ways my new projects grows directly out of these books.

00:31:30: I am very interested in migrations, care and digital technologies but i'm studying them in a very different context.

00:31:42: This book focuses on internal migration within China and asks how family maintain kinship across long geographical distances.

00:31:53: My new project shifts the focus to cross-border migration.

00:31:57: I studied digital pathways of Chinese migrants who transit through Latin America, on their journey to United States.

00:32:06: What fascinates me is that smartphone & digital platforms have become an essential part of migration itself.

00:32:15: People use social media to gather information, navigate unfamiliar routes assess risks stay in touch with their family members and making sense of uncertainty.

00:32:28: at the same time.

00:32:30: these digital practices are deeply emotional and effective.

00:32:36: they're shaped by hope fear anxiety, aspiration care.

00:32:45: So I understand migration not simply as a physical journey that people move but is digital and also effective journey, effective trajectory.

00:32:57: It sounds quite interesting how digital technologies play an essential role in migration and I can't wait to hear more about it as it develops.

00:33:10: Thank you very much for this rich conversation, I congratulate again on these new books and wish all the best in your future research!

00:33:23: We end this episode with a quote picked by our host Juhun Sun.

00:33:27: Hence, love and relatedness I argue is nourished not only in bilateral relations between the provider and receiver but also in a web of interrelations among multiple family members extending their anthropological notion of kinship to encompass multilaterally dependent relationships that transcend time & space Upcoming in kinship across distances, gender generation and class dynamics in Chinese trans-local families.

00:34:00: Page one hundred sixty nine by Chen Weiwang.