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Despite rapid social and economic changes, the persistence of gender inequalities in the conventional nuclear family remains puzzling. It seems unlikely that women will contest gender inequalities if they have accepted the ideology of separate spheres or if they regard mothering and care giving as integral to their feminine identity. However, this article re-examines these issues by analysing the family practices of 23 married Chinese women. It argues that how and why women 'do gender' have to be understood along with their family circumstances and their broader social contexts. It also reveals how women in unhappy marriages have developed creative strategies to subvert the needs and authority of their husbands and de-centre the nuclear family as their sole source of care and support. The article contributes to the discussion by unfolding the complexity, fluidity and cultural specificity of practices, agency and change.

Occupational gender inequalities are an important sociological concern. Studies on men in female-dominated occupations, such as nursing, have offered rich insights to advance our understanding of gender dynamics in contemporary society. However, current theoretical and empirical accounts have been mostly dominated by Westernized discussions. Utilizing insights from critical studies on men and masculinities, alongside Chinese masculinities studies, this article seeks to enrich the discourse by examining the working experiences of 12 Chinese male nurses in a city hospital. It identifies a culturally specific stigma faced by filial Chinese men. It unravels the masculinity strategies and gender capital, and their effects, used by Chinese male nurses to defend their ability and contributions. It reveals the difficulties and paradoxes arising when men negotiate new hegemonic masculine ideals in post-socialist China. This article provides a nuanced understanding of non-Western masculinities and insights into practices that have been used to sustain male dominance in female-dominated and emotionally demanding jobs.

PurposeThis article reflects on the adaption of Sarah Pink's video re-enactment methodology for exploring children's out-of-school lifeworlds.Design/methodology/approachVideo re-enactments originate in the work of Sarah Pink who developed the methodology to study everyday routines, including activities associated with people's energy consumption at home. This article discusses the adaption of this methodology for exploring 9–10-year-old children's out-of-school lifeworlds in their homes in the global cities of Hong Kong, Melbourne and Singapore.FindingsThe article reflects on the practical ways in which the video re-enactment methodology was adapted to explore children's out-of-school activities in the three different locations. In terms of activities, the findings highlight that children's out-of-school lifeworlds included regular routines across a week that contribute to and constitute their everyday activities, with varying time spent on leisure, homework and scheduled activities.Originality/valueThe authors discuss and reflect on the implications of adapting a methodology in order to make it relevant and innovative in a new research context. The use of video re-enactments with children to explore their out-of-school activities gives greater insights into their lifeworlds and their engagement in various activities and the opportunity for children to reflect on their everyday lives.

Existing analyses of lifestyle in migration studies have focused on individual, rather than family, aspirations, while studies of Chinese transnational migration have focused on instrumentalism, rather than the quality-of-life factors, driving family migration. Moreover, these two fields of study have tended to center on the privileges of relatively affluent migrants, largely overlooking important familial and economic dimensions for middle- and upper-middle-class migrants. Drawing on 38 in-depth interviews with returnee parents from Hong Kong who have migrated back to their previous places of residence in the West or have plans to do so, this article addresses these gaps by examining reverse family migration considerations. We identify the aspiration for a better quality of life for the family, rather than for the self, as the dominant driver of migration. We find that returnee parents' main frames of reference for considering how and where to live were shaped by interactions between their children's education, economic factors, transnational mobility, and imaginary and emotional aspects of migration. Our analysis shows the value of engaging with lifestyle in efforts to understand reverse migration among Chinese families. More broadly, this article contributes to better understanding of migration motivation by drawing attention to family-centered lifestyle aspirations and the coexistence of privilege and precarity among relatively affluent middling migrants, areas that have been insufficiently explored in research on Chinese transnational migration and lifestyle migration.

PurposeCross-border students – children who are permanent residents of Hong Kong but live on the mainland and travel across the border to school every day – have been an important social, educational and political issue in Hong Kong. Nevertheless, current discussions regarding this issue focus mainly on the group of students whose parents are Chinese residents and seldom examine the wider contribution of social, geo-political, global-economic and policy changes to the phenomenon. These shortcomings have limited the understanding of the role of the state and the varied needs of these child migrants from diverse family backgrounds. This paper aims to address these gaps.Design/methodology/approachIt proposes to bring changing border and immigration policies in Hong Kong back into the current analysis and offers a case study of border history. It revisits publications on Hong Kong's immigration and migration policies, official statistics and government policy papers and (re)constructs the border changes that took place during the period from 1950 to 2013, which led to the rise and complexity of cross-border students.FindingsThis critical historical review offers two important findings: First, it reveals how the government, through its restrictive and liberalized border regulations, has constrained and produced different types of cross-border families. Second, it shows that cross-border students come from diverse family configurations, which have adopted cross-border schooling as a family strategy.Originality/valueThese findings underscore the importance of historical perspective, the wider context in migration studies, the centrality of the state in migrant families and a differentiated understanding of child migrants.