As endorsed by the Confucian norm of filial piety, China has a long history of relying on adult children to take care of older people. However, as Chinese society becomes urbanized and industrialized, massive numbers of rural younger adults have migrated to urban areas to seek employment, resulting in great challenges to late-age care provision in rural regions. To support care of older parents, especially when they suffer from a terminal illness, it is common to see rural migrants give up their work in the city to return to their village to care for sick older parents. While the crisis of family care for older people has been frequently discussed in existing scholarship, an in-depth study on the lived experiences and subjectivities of filial care of migrant peasant workers remains under-examined. It is against this backdrop that Longtao He wrote this book, which grew out of the author's PhD thesis. Using a methodology grounded in a Foucauldian discourse analysis, He examines the experiences and perceptions of filial care of migrant peasant workers who care for elderly parents suffering from cancer.
Offering a socio-historical foundation in order to understand the burden of care of Chinese migrant peasant workers, chapter one introduces a series of social backdrops to the needs of care for elderly cancer patients: the insufficient welfare system provisions, the crisis of family care and the decline in governmental response. Chapter two offers a retrospective analysis of the philosophical discourse of filial piety in China, which is fundamental to the practice of family care. It looks at the decline of filial piety and the transition of its meaning – from a moral ideal to a form of practical exchange – during China's socio-economic transformations. It describes how filial piety has been revived and promoted in response to an elderly care crisis that has arisen in the face of the state's retreat from social welfare funding in the late reform era. Chapter three provides a systematic review of existing studies concerning filial piety, theories of modernization and intergenerational relationships, with implications for the current research regarding how to unpack the mechanism and discourse of filial care. Chapter four introduces the methodological foundation of this research. Specifically, it explores how to integrate a Foucauldian discourse with Confucian filial piety to study people's experiences of family care in China. Chapter five reports the methodological design of the research, including a qualitative approach focusing on Foucauldian discourse analysis, research questions and objectives, research methods and fieldwork study, and procedures for data collection and data analysis. Chapters six, seven and eight report major findings from examining migrant peasant workers’ experiences and subjectivities of practising care for their terminally ill parents. Findings highlight three major discourses that migrant peasant workers employed to make sense of their care experiences: the burden of care for migrant peasant workers and filial piety's mediating role; a discourse of parental sacrifice; and the intertwined discourse of parental sacrifice and forgetting. Based on the similarities between Foucauldian discourse and Chinese philosophy, chapter nine revisits the mechanism migrant peasant workers deployed to interact with filial discourse in the face of socio-economic transitions. The final chapter recapitulates the research questions, the main findings and their research significance. The author also proposes recommendations for future research and policies to improve migrant peasant workers’ care conditions and support their filial care practices.
As the convention of family-based elderly care provision is under pressure from modernization and rural-to-urban migration, an extensive examination on how filial discourse is subjectively (re)constructed and perceived in China's changing social context bears great interest for both academic researchers and policymakers. An account of discursive analysis on the lived experiences and subjectivities of elderly care by migrant peasant workers, such as this book provides, certainly enriches our understanding of the reflexive discursive constructions of filial piety and caregiving in China. Additionally, the methodological design of this research makes a significant contribution to theoretical explorations that seek ways to localize Western methodology in the Chinese context. It will be a valuable and essential source of reference for researchers interested in population ageing, Chinese philosophy, family care and welfare issues faced by the rural elderly in China.
Meanwhile, there are also a few issues, related primarily to my own concerns, that are beyond the scope of discussion in this book. A better understanding regarding how rural migrants experience and perceive elderly care and filial piety is inseparable from discussions about the rural–urban structural divide in China. More research is needed to understand the gaps and inequalities in social welfare provision between rural and urban areas, as these also profoundly shape the way rural dwellers value and perceive filial care. Another problem is that too much attention has been paid to migrant caregivers’ voices and subjectivities. It would be interesting to hear how elderly people experience family care and perceive filial piety during China's socio-economic transitions.
