Young Female Migrant Workers' Life Skills Learning and Practice, its Sources and Empowerment Properties in Their Own Words.

摘要

This study investigated the experiences of informal learning of life skills, the learning sources and possible empowerment properties on the part of young female migrant workers in China. This study employed a basic interpretive research design, using semi-structured interviews, observations and field notes. The Capability approach provided the conceptual framework underlying the research and analysis.;This research found that the migrant women, though impeded by many structural constraints, informally learned and practiced key life skills to some extent as they adjusted to the urban life. Most of them had developed aspirations to learn better communication and occupational skills to integrate better into the urban environment. The sources of learning were confined to rural migrant social network from home, at work and church, the occasional self-help book, and growing phone and Internet use. Informal learning created a fertile space for empowerment, where migrant women enhanced their agency, capabilities and material and inner well-being. Yet, government policy, social-economic and residential segregation often confined the migrants to second-class status in the city and diminished the empowering impact of life skills.;This research covered a gap in literature by investigating life skills and capabilities of migrant women and the connections between life skills and empowerment. It applied theory to explain practices and provided theoretical support for the importance of life skills which NGOs failed to address. Moreover, since internal labor migration is undertaking worldwide, this study is useful to suggest explanations of similar phenomena in other countries.