Life amidst Rubble: Migrant Mental Health and the Management of Subjectivity in Urban China

Abstract

While previous studies have documented the trials of rural-to-urban migration in postreform China, little is known of the consequences of urban demolition and attendant uncertainty on migrant mental health. Exploring the affective and subjective dimensions of life lived amidst rubble in a migrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Shanghai, this essay describes and analyzes smallscale practices of endurance through dynamics of time, place, and sociality. These modes of dwelling in a ruined environment are key to what the authors refer to as the management of subjectivity, producing moments of being that potentially enable to feel and act otherwise. Considering the management of subjectivity in its own right rather than as mere echoes of postsocialist governmentalities, the authors sustain a dialogue with recent writing on the production of happy and self-reliant marginalized subjects through the Chinese authorities’ turn to “therapeutic governance.”