Split Households Research Articles

Mongolian Pastoralist Parents’ Experiences in Managing Their Primary School Children’s Living Arrangements

Sending children, especially six-year-old ones, to school put pressure on pastoralist or herder households to balance their livestock herding needs and their children’s schooling needs at the same time. Due to remote campsites located in isolated rural areas far from any schools, pastoralists need to arrange a place for their children to stay during the school year. In this interpretive phenomenological study, we explored pastoralist parents’ experiences in managing different living arrangements for their primary school children during the school year. We conducted semi-structured interviews with five pastoralist parents from a remote county (an administrative division under a province) in Mongolia. Living arrangement options included staying in a boarding school dormitory, staying at a relative’s place, and staying with mothers in split households. The pastoralist parents’ own school experiences, the presence of first-grade school children, boarding school conditions, and family resources were found to be important factors for deciding the best living arrangement. We recommend that the government agencies should work on improving conditions of school dormitories and on providing better educational opportunities for pastoralists and their children.

Do rural migrant parents intend to settle in cities? Impacts of childcare strategies, split households, migration duration, and distance

IntroductionThe current transnational and internal migration involve more and more circular and temporary residences in the host communities. However, few studies have examined the settlement intention of circular and temporary migrant parents with children under 18 years old, which has made inclusive planning for these migrants' needs difficult. This paper aimed to examine whether rural migrant parents intended to settle in cities, with specific discussion about the impacts of childcare strategies, split households, and migration duration and distance.MethodsThis was a cross-sectional study design. The data was sourced from the China Migrants Dynamic Survey.ResultsThrough analysis of a sample of 4,247 rural migrant parents in the Pearl River Delta, this study found that 56% of rural migrant parents intended to become urban settlers. Higher levels of education and income and longer migration durations yielded the parents' increased intention to become urban settlers. The birthplaces and primary caregivers of migrants' children were also significant factors. Moreover, split households, especially households in which the youngest child did not live with the parents in cities, decreased parents' intention to settle permanently. Instead of geographic distance, administrative provincial boundaries were found to be a critical factor in inter-provincial migrant parents' decreased intention to settle in cities.DiscussionThis study provides insights into understanding urbanization in China and contributes to future policy studies regarding internal migration, social integration and population growth, especially in a low fertility and rapid aging contest.

Urban-urban split households in China: Gender, migration, and stay-behind women

The study of split households in China and beyond has traditionally centered on rural-urban migration, overlooking the prevalence of split householding among urban-urban migrants. Despite receiving scant scholarly attention, urban-urban migrant dynamics, particularly concerning relational power negotiation among women in long-distance relationships, warrant exploration. This paper delves into the experiences of urban-urban migrants in China, spotlighting how stay-behind women negotiate relational power within split households. Drawing from 30 in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted with various types of migrant households and focusing on 12 split households, this study sheds light on the relationships of contemporary urban, educated Chinese couples with patriarchal values entrenched in the Confucian family system. The findings reveal that split households expose the tension between entrenched Confucian patriarchy and women’s aspirations for autonomy. While serving as a respite from traditional gender roles, split households inadvertently offer women newfound independence. Although not overtly challenging conventional gender norms, stay-behind women in urban-urban split households leverage agency and empowerment within the existing gender framework. This research underscores the evolving gender dynamics in China, poised between entrenched patriarchy and emerging spaces for alternative gender practices, offering insights into the nuanced experiences of women in split households.

Householding and split households: Examples and stories of Asian migrants to cities

Given the central role of households in motivating and implementing migration, this paper argues that the “householding” and split-household approaches are fundamental and essential for migration research, by drawing from original research on rural-urban migrants in China and four published studies on Asian migrants. Translocality and household-splitting that enable the earning of remittances or help meet other family goals such as children's education, set in motion processes of gender and intergenerational divisions of labor that involve both the migrants and the left-behind, and have implications for urban development in large cities as well as cities near rural areas. Hundreds of millions of rural migrants in China circulate between their home villages and host cities, and large numbers of women from Southeast Asia work overseas. Likewise, skilled migrants from South Asia and East Asia maintain transnational households that straddle their home and host countries. Household biographies and interviewees' narratives from these examples highlight two strategies of migrants and their family members: their flexibility and frequent changes of location, work, activity, and household arrangement; and their reinventing women's and men's responsibilities without challenging traditional gender ideology. These stories underscore the importance of householding and split-households for informing contemporary migration theories and research.

A homeownership paradox: why do Chinese homeowners rent the housing they live in?

China is an ownership society, but with a paradox – many homeowners do not live in the apartments/houses they own, and instead live in rental housing. This is different from the pattern in Western economies where households own multiple properties but still live in an owned unit. The paper is situated within the literature on the financialization of housing and the changing meaning of homeownership. We examine the paradox by studying its patterns and dynamics using 2017 China Household Finance Survey data. We find that the owner-renting in China is a result of spatial, temporal and functional mismatches between housing needs. The intrinsic investment strategy and services linked to homeownership have made it imperative to own homes, regardless a household’s housing needs. Young, single, better-off and split households, and those in large, expensive cities are more likely to be owners-renting. In addition, institutional barriers in the housing market such as migrant status, housing purchase limit policy, and subsidized housing encourage owner-renting.

Split Households, Family Migration and Urban Settlement: Findings from China’s 2015 National Floating Population Survey

For decades, China’s rural migrants have split their households between their rural origins and urban work locations. While the hukou system continues to be a barrier to urban settlement, research has also underscored split households as a migrant strategy that spans the rural and urban boundary, questioning if sustained migration will eventually result in permanent urban settlement. Common split-household arrangements include sole migration, where the spouse and children are left behind, and couple migration, where both spouses are migrants, leaving behind their children. More recently, nuclear family migration involving both the spouse and children has been on the rise. Based on a 2015 nationally representative “floating population” survey, this article compares sole migrants, couple migrants, and family migrants in order to examine which migrants choose which household arrangements, including whether specific household arrangements are more associated with settlement intention than others. Our analysis also reveals differences between work-related migrants and family-related migrants. The findings highlight demographic, gender, economic, employment, and destination differences among the different types of migrant household arrangements, pointing to family migration as a likely indicator of permanent settlement. The increase of family migration over time signals to urban governments an increased urgency to address their needs as not only temporary dwellers but more permanent residents.

Cash Transfers and Gender Differentials in Child Schooling and Labor: Evidence from the Lesotho Child Grants Programme

Cash Transfers and Gender Differentials in Child Schooling and Labor: Evidence from the Lesotho Child Grants Programme

To Live Apart or Together: Integration Outcomes of Astronaut Versus Dual-Parent Household Strategies

In this paper, we examine the interactions between transnationalism and integration in a case-control study. Using a typology of interactions, the study assesses how a transnational household form affects structural and socio-cultural integration. The research draws upon 20 interviews with Chinese immigrants to Vancouver, Canada, to compare the integration experiences of women in transnational split households with those of women in dual-parent households. In the transnational split households, the women live with their children in the receiving nation-state, while their husbands reside and work in the country of origin. The findings illustrate an antagonistic relationship between transnationalism, and employment and financial integration. In contrast, results show a transnational split household approach positively affects housing and socio-cultural integration as compared to a dual-parent household strategy.

Winters without women: social change, split households and gendered labour in rural Mongolia

In this article, I use absence as a lens to explore social change and masculinity in rural Mongolia, with a focus on household splitting during winter months. Since the breakdown in state-sponsored dormitory systems, many mobile pastoralists split their households to accommodate children during the school year. This results in women moving to settled centres while men remain in pastures to care for livestock. In critical reflections on rural work, both male and female herders have underscored concerns around the absence of women in rural homes. In Mongolia, absence has different implications for men and women, gendered division of labour and social roles, which are tied to household economies and pastoralist work practices. Drawing from ethnographic field research, the cases contribute to understandings of the co-constitutive nature of space and society, and attempts to dislodge ideas about the fixed nature of households in rural Mongolia.

Revisiting VFR tourism in South Africa

The segment of visiting, friends and relatives (VFR) is one of the largest components of tourism economies. During the last two decades there emerged tourism scholarship around VFR travel, mostly in Australia, the USA and Europe. This paper examines the size, characteristics and spatial patterns of VFR tourism in South Africa. It is argued that studies of VFR travel in the global South must be linked to questions about migration. In the South African case the volume, nature and geography of VFR tourism cannot be understood without an analysis of historical migration trends. It is demonstrated that VFR travel is the largest element of domestic tourism and is dominated by black travellers. In terms of explanation, the continued role of circular mobilities in the post-apartheid period is highlighted. The geographical patterns of VFR tourism in South Africa reveal a complex of factors and most importantly the existence of split or translocal households for which VFR mobilities are critical. In South Africa, strong VFR travel occurs to large metropolitan areas and to the former homeland areas that are not considered as significant tourism destinations. Arguably, in many of these rural areas of South Africa VFR travel is the most significant driver of local tourism economies.

Migration, Householding and the Well-being of Left-behind Women in Rural Ningxia

In recent years, large-scale labor migration has had a significant impact on the social landscape of rural China. Large numbers of rural Chinese men work away from home for long periods until they reach late middle age, while rural women also often migrate when young, but generally return to the countryside to get married. After marriage and childbirth, most women remain in the village, but repeated episodes of migration are increasingly common among married women in their 20s and 30s. Consequently, much of the Chinese countryside is dominated by split households and a depleted, shifting population of middle-aged women, children and the elderly.

Migration and Split Households: A Comparison of Sole, Couple, and Family Migrants in Beijing, China

The practice of split households among rural–urban migrants in China has persisted for more than twenty years. In this paper we compare three forms of split households, differentiated by whether the migrant's spouse and children are left behind or have joined the migrant: sole migration, couple migration, and family migration. Our survey of fifty chengzhongcun (urban villages) in Beijing conducted in 2008 shows that couple migration and family migration are outcomes of rural Chinese actively rearranging their household division of labor in order to maximize earnings from urban work opportunities. Migrants' decision to leave the children behind or to bring them along depends on the children's age and whether migrants' parents are available to help. Contrary to expectation, more household members in the city signals neither stronger intention to stay nor greater trust in the host society. These findings highlight the importance of thinking about migrants as circulators and thinking about migration, including family migration, as not necessarily a prelude to permanent settlement. They also underscore the need to address the experiences of long-term split households, a discourse that has received much less attention than one that assumes that a family lives together most of the time.

Bringing the house down: religion and the household in Marlowe's Jew of Malta

Christopher Marlowe's depictions of religious conflict engage with major political and national issues, but they also acknowledge the domestic implications of such conflict. In sixteenth‐century England, theological dissent split households as well as nations, and Marlowe introduces his audiences to characters who cite religious precedents to justify domestic treason: committed in the name of religion, their actions fracture families, and turn servants against masters. Marlowe's interest in households devastated by religious difference is most evident in The Jew of Malta. As this article argues, Malta's households are destroyed by characters who use religious rhetoric to rationalise self‐interested and anti‐social agendas: the anti‐Semitic Ferneze, seizing Barabas' property; Barabas, killing a daughter who varies from him in religion; and Ithimore the Turk, betraying his Jewish master. This article suggests that Marlowe's play responds to contemporary experiences of religious persecution, in particular the Protestant state's campaign to eradicate the English recusant household, and concludes that Marlowe is, within a domestic setting, exposing the hypocritical appropriation of religious rhetoric by characters selfinterestedly pursuing purely secular advantage.

Changing roles and attitudes of women staying behind in split households when men emigrate: The story of the secluded Greek island of Kythera with mass emigration to Australia

This article deals with the neglected issue of changing roles and attitudes of women staying behind when the male members of the family emigrate. It focuses on emigration from the small Greek island of Kythera, with the population of Kytherian origin in Australia more than 20 times its current inhabitants. Male emigration to Australia, just before and after the Second World War, would not have been possible had women (wives and daughters) not taken on the role and activities of the departing husband, son, or brother. This new role of women brought about considerable changes in the running and the sustenance of the household, as well as in attitudes vis-a-vis the micro-social environment of the village, and the island at large. The article analyzes various social and economic dimensions of the new regime of the split migrant household and highlights the gender issues emerging from the new responsibilities and activities of the women involved.

Buddhism and Popular Ritual in Mongolian Religion: A Reexamination of the Fire Cult

Previous articleNext article No AccessBuddhism and Popular Ritual in Mongolian Religion: A Reexamination of the Fire CultChristopher P. AtwoodChristopher P. Atwood Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by History of Religions Volume 36, Number 2Nov., 1996 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/463455 Views: 25Total views on this site Citations: 10Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1996 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:NIMROD BARANOVITCH The Ethnic Ecocritical Animal: Animal protagonists and ethnic environmentalism in contemporary Sino-Mongolian literature and art, Modern Asian Studies 55, no.33 (Aug 2020): 1015–1063.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X20000062Chaitawat Boonjubun, Anne Haila, Jani Vuolteenaho Religious Land as Commons: Buddhist Temples, Monastic Landlordism, and the Urban Poor in Thailand, American Journal of Economics and Sociology 80, no.22 (Jun 2021): 585–636.https://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12382Melissa Chakars Buddhism and the Siberian Buryat Chronicles: Stories of Origin, Rivalry, and Negotiation in the Russian Empire, History of Religions 60, no.22 (Dec 2020): 81–102.https://doi.org/10.1086/710574Renatas Berniūnas, Vilius Dranseika, Delgermend Tserendamba Between Karma and Buddha: Prosocial Behavior among Mongolians in an Anonymous Economic Game, The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 30, no.22 (Dec 2019): 142–160.https://doi.org/10.1080/10508619.2019.1696497Benedikte V. Lindskog Managing Uncertainty, Beckoning Security: Ritual Offerings to a Local Ovoo in Mongolia, Ethnos 7 (Dec 2019): 1–19.https://doi.org/10.1080/00141844.2019.1699143Brian Baumann Animal Signs: Theriomorphic Intercession Between Heaven and Imperial Mongolian History, (Nov 2019): 391–419.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24363-0_13Ariell Ahearn Winters without women: social change, split households and gendered labour in rural Mongolia, Gender, Place & Culture 25, no.33 (Mar 2018): 399–415.https://doi.org/10.1080/0966369X.2018.1443910Isabelle Bianquis Bibliographie, (Jan 2013): 217–224.https://doi.org/10.4000/books.pufr.31642Johan Elverskog Two Buddhisms in Contemporary Mongolia, Contemporary Buddhism 7, no.11 (May 2006): 29–46.https://doi.org/10.1080/14639940600877937Robert Adlam, Lorne Holyoak Shamanism in the postmodern world, Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 34, no.3-43-4 (Feb 2017): 517–568.https://doi.org/10.1177/000842980503400313

Migration, Remittances, and the Family

Remittances by migrants along with migration itself are elements in a migrant familys intertemporal contractual arrangement. The reasons why the migrant and his family voluntarily enter into a mutually beneficial contractual arrangement with each other rather than with a 3rd party--are discussed and the conditions under which the contractual arrangement is self-enforcing are identified. Both parties can usually benefit from a number of Pareto-efficient mutual contractual arrangements. This gives rise to an indeterminacy problem solved through a bargaining process between the parties who consequently converge to a contractual arrangement implying a specific flow of migrant-to-family remittances. The chosen contractual arrangement reflects the relative bargaining powers of the parties and variables impinging upon these powers thus bear upon remittances. In the light of these arguments tests are conducted on observed remittance behavior across individual migrants in Botswana. (authors)

Sojourners versus New Urbanites: Causes and Consequences of Temporary versus Permanent Cityward Migration in Developing Countries

The causes and consequences of the contrasting patterns of migration are important and remain essentially unexplored. Those who regard themselves as sojourners in the city will seek different kinds of housing demand fewer amenities and services behave differently with respect to making friends and joining organizations use accumulated savings for different purposes and respond to different political issues and candidates than will people committed to the city as their permanent home. Where a large proportion of inmigrants regard their stay as temporary patterns of informal and formal urban social organization the nature and degree of demands on urban government and even the physical development of the city will be affected. This will hold regardless of whether the migrants who expect to return to their home places in fact do so. As long as they plan to return their intentions will shape their behavior in the city. Attention in this comparison of sojourners and new urbanites is directed to the following: variation in the permanence of cityward migration (intercountry differences the long run trend toward permanence); causes of variation in the permanence of cityward migration (economic and social consequences levels and patterns of political participation migration patterns and national political dynamics). Clearly the stability of demand for urban labor partly determines the mix of temporary and permanent migrants. Differences in levels of industrialization and the pace of economic growth must account for much of the contrast in migration patterns between South Asia and Africa on the 1 hand and Latin America Taiwan and Korea on the other. Tensions among ethnic groups are a less noted urban factor which may affect the permanence of migration. Urban conditions in general or as they bear on specific groups are only part of the explanation for varying migration patterns. For example except where strong economic discrimination is involved urban economic conditions fail to explain the behavior of atypical streams--temporary or cyclic migrants in places where permanent migration is the norm or permanent migrants in heavily temporary settings. Rural migrants desire and ability to return home after a shorter or longer stay in the city are strongly affected by their access to the land or to alternative sources of rural livelihood by rural kinship structure the importance of age graded social roles the cultural and religious significance of the land and by customs or events which make outcasts of certain groups of people. Rural conditions probably are the most important explanation for the particular forms of temporary migration in different areas but for the behavior of atypical streams. Commitment to the city strongly influences the flow of private savings into urban housing and associated amenities.