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Lookup NU author(s): Quan Gao, Professor Peter Hopkins
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
This paper investigates the subjectivities of Christian women migrant workers within the context of China’s social transformation, characterised by the interactive advancement of global capitalism, rural-to-urban migration, and “Christian fever”. Despite the burgeoning literature on women migrant workers in global capitalism within geographical scholarship, there has been less focus on women migrants’ religious subjectivity and agency. Drawing empirical research on the intersectional experiences of women migrant workers, this paper seeks to advance a postsecular feminism by bringing intersectionality into conversation with debates on postsecularity and gender inequalities. First, we examine the intersectional “matrix of domination” imposed through state power, Chinese patriarchal culture, and the gendered and class-based disciplinary labour regime under global capitalism, which serves as an ontological condition in which women migrants’ religious subjectivities form and are shaped. Second, we utilise intersectionality to help understand the process of becoming and a relation of emergence, wherein multiple agential qualities of women migrants – manifesting as counter-patriarchal subjects or through docile, tolerant, self-sacrificial, and pious femininity – arise at the intersections of religion, class, gender, and family. We therefore argue that postsecular feminist critique needs to carefully consider the patterns and diverse effects of intersectionality where both domination and religious agency are engendered and interwoven.
Author(s): Gao Q, Hopkins P, Ma X
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Annals of the American Association of Geographers
Year: 2024
Pages: ePub ahead of Print
Online publication date: 22/10/2024
Acceptance date: 24/09/2024
Date deposited: 20/09/2024
ISSN (print): 2469-4452
ISSN (electronic): 1467-8306
Publisher: Routledge
URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2024.2410002
DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2024.2410002
ePrints DOI: 10.57711/reb2-by84
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