内容简介

Abstract: After going through the changes brought about by moving from rural areas to cities, male migrant workers encounter great difficulties in reclaiming their dislocated masculinity in urban contexts where hegemonic masculinity dominates. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork undertaken between 2023 and 2024 that involves in-depth interviews with 27 Chinese rural-to-urban migrant working fathers (RUMWF), this study focuses on how this particular group of males navigate hegemonic masculinity in their practice of long-distance fathering to assert their masculinity. The findings shows that while masculinity ideal forces them to become silent in presence of their children, underlying their various types of silence lies their profound love for children and active efforts they make to defend their images of fathers and masculinity. This study explores a group of under-theorized working-class fathers in migrant settings and sheds light on the topic of male migrants’ silence, which has been largely neglected in existing studies.

Key words: migration; rural families; fathers; working-class masculinity; hegemonic masculinity.