Chinese Female Return Migrants’ Emotion in the Domestic Sphere

Abstract

Recently, the study of emotion has become an important subject in sociology. Many works have been done on analyzing people’s emotions and emotion work, especially on migrants and transnational families, how people feel when they are apart from their families, and how they try to manage their feelings. However, not many studies have been done of the emotions and emotion work of return migrants and their relationship with their family members. Therefore, in this paper, the emotion work of female return migrants and their relationship with their family members is studied. In this thesis, the feelings experienced and how they manage their feelings will be examined, and the consequences and impact of their effort in trying to manage their feelings will be discussed. In most cases, female return migrants may face more severe challenges than males for many reasons such as social stereotypes of women and roles they should take on in a family, and the emotions they are supposed to feel. Hence, it is noteworthy to study how they deal with these issues.