LING, Minhua. 2019. The Inconvenient Generation: Migrant Youth Coming of Age on Shanghai’s Edge. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

In the Midst of Rubble, Bordering the Wasteland: Landscapes of Ruins and Childhood Experiences in China

ABSTRACT: Drawing from two ethnographic studies of children, one in a former industrial neighbourhood in the process of demolition in Shanghai, and the other in a rural town in Guangdong, this article explores the relationships children form with the landscape of ruins as they wander about with the aim of identifying the opportunities these offer in terms of games, freedom, and sharing, etc. The article analyses two different dynamics in the types of ruins and the experiences associated with them: concentration and dispersion. The structural geography and qualitative demography that emerge from this are barely mentioned in Chinese public debate, in its categories (children of “migrant workers” or “left-behind” children), its problems, and its very negative representations, but whilst they underline the unequal divisions in society, they also reveal a richness of experience that is far from being necessarily unhappy. KEYWORDS: childhood, Shanghai, Guangdong, migrant workers, left-behind children, ruins, structural geography, qualitative demography, Deleuze, ethnography.