Negotiating Health and Migration Aspirations: Lay Health Beliefs among Chinese Rural-to-Urban Migrant Workers in Shanghai and Beijing

Adopting both demographic and ethnographic approaches, this thesis examines the processes through which health inequalities are reinforced and reproduced among rural migrants in contemporary urban China. It places a particular focus on what appears to be a common struggle shared by rural migrant workers, that of meeting their migration aspirations and expectations while afflicted by health, illness and disease-related constraints. This thesis will first examine the demographic health characteristics of Chinese migrant workers’ before utilising ethnographic research approaches to examine their subjective constructions of health knowledge and lay health practices. By contrasting how migrant workers, specifically migrant parents, manage their family health problems in different individual and social settings, my thesis explores the micro-mechanisms of the reproduction of health inequalities as reflected in migrant workers’ understandings and interpretations of health-related behaviours, lay health beliefs and lay aetiologic accounts. Ultimately, this thesis illustrates the processes through which social inequalities have become embedded in health, which, in turn, shape people’s subjective understandings of achievement and health. Similar to other migrant workers over the world, the health challenges faced by Chinese rural-to-urban migrant workers are influenced by many other broad social inequalities and limitations they encounter in new spaces. As this thesis demonstrates, it is not simply enough to address the health challenges of migrant workers in a vacuum, focusing on illness or disease alone. A greater focus must be placed on understanding the aspirations of migrant workers and their changing perspectives throughout their migration journeys.