This paper examines the impact of rural-urban migration on primary school-age migrant girls in China, providing important data on this unexplored group as well as drawing several larger conclusions about the evolving relationship between migration and women's autonomy. Much recent literature has focused on Chinese young unmarried women migrants. However, there has been no attempt to distinguish the effect of migration on children by gender, and little research on the "new generation" of married women migrants. This paper focuses on two aspects of migrant girls' well-being, education and migration satisfaction, and compares girls' assessments with those of their parents, particularly their mothers. It analyses differences between the views of both girls and parents, arguing that specific parental concerns about daughters shape girls' futures in ways that do not apply to migrant boys. A further, broader, implication of this analysis is that certain benefits of migration, previously thought to apply exclusively to single women, extend also to married women, influencing mothers when forming goals for their daughters' futures. © 2015 The China Quarterly.

Education China Gender Migrant Children migrant girls Well-being

China young population autonomy primary education Shenzhen Guangdong Urbanization rural-urban migration womens status