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Toward Postsecular Feminism: Intersectionality and the Religious Subjectivities of Women Migrant Workers in China

Lookup NU author(s): Quan Gao, Professor Peter Hopkins

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).


Abstract

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.


Publication metadata

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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Funding

Funder referenceFunder name
National Natural Science Foundation of China (42201240)
Science and Technology Projects in Guangzhou (2023A04J1983)
Young Elite Scientists Sponsorship by CAST (2022QNRC001)

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