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

• Published in: Annals of the American Association of Geographers Vol. 115; no. 1; pp. 167 - 183
• Main Authors: Gao, Quan, Hopkins, Peter, Ma, Xinrong
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington Taylor & Francis Ltd 02.01.2025
• Subjects: Capitalism; Christians; Dominance; Femininity; Feminism; Gender; Gender inequality; Intersectionality; Migrant workers; Migrants; Religion; Rural urban migration; State power; Subjectivity; Transformation; Women; Workers; China
• ISSN: 2469-4452; 2469-4460
• DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2024.2410002

This article investigates the subjectivities of Christian women migrant workers within the context of China’s social transformation, characterized 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 on empirical research on the intersectional experiences of women migrant workers, this article 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 labor regime under global capitalism, which serves as an ontological condition in which women migrants’ religious subjectivities form and are shaped. Second, we use intersectionality to help understand the process of becoming and a relation of emergence, wherein multiple agential qualities of women migrants—manifesting as counterpatriarchal 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.