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Factory Girls Leslie Chang Summary

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Recommended: Effects of urbanization

Leslie Chang does an outstanding job in her book Factory Girls describing how China’s society is changing as a whole because of the migration from rural to urban areas. She uses the experiences and perspectives of Chinese women in order to describe this social phenomena which is very unique because most of the time women are ignored in Chinese history. Chang specifically talks about how two women, Lu Qingmin and Wu Chunming, deal with living in the growing city of Dongguan. She talks about their family life, love life, who they aspire to be, and what they aspire to achieve. Within their stories, she also references her own life, connecting herself to the girls. Chang’s family also once were immigrants migrating to have a better life. I believe …show more content…

She says this is because “They are younger, better educated, and more enterprising than the people they leave behind” (Chang 11). Migrants are named the elite based off the fact they are doing just a bit better than their families still living in rural towns. I personally believe elites does not describe them at all. Yeah, they are in “better” living situations than most of their family members, but in the city they are the lowest class of citizens and that is exactly how they are treated. Bosses treat them wrong and do not pay them correctly unless someone stands up and demands it. This definitely shows how people can be exactly the same in all situations, but can be viewed completely different based on unalike societies’ perspectives. When I thought about this situation, I immediately compared it to Mexican immigrants in the United States. They come to America and get the hardest, but worst paying jobs, they are treated wrong, and are constantly looked down upon by well-off Americans because apparently “they’re taking their jobs”. The reason so many Mexican immigrants work so hard is to send their earned money back home to their families still stuck in Mexico. In their family’s eyes they are basically super heroes, but still in American society they are treated like dirt. This is definitely not one social phenomena only happening in China, but possibly around the entire

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