Floating grandparents: Rethinking family obligation and intergenerational support

Abstract

Discussion of China’s internal migration typically focuses on the movement of young rural workers to cities and, correspondingly, on the women, children and elderly who remain in villages and small towns, the so-called ‘left-behind’. This article fills a gap in the literature by examining the situation of grandparents who join their migrant adult children to facilitate their workforce participation by providing childcare. The article shows how grandparents and their adult children reinterpret and negotiate intergenerational family obligation in constructing their own lives. Based on extensive interview data the article provides a theoretically-informed and empirically-based understanding of intergenerational relations in China’s internal labor migration.