Moving Away,Moving Up,and Moving Back: Gender Dimensions of Social and Geographical Mobility in East Asia

Introduction

Familialist values and patriarchal practices in East Asia have usually granted more opportunities for geographical and social mobility to men than to women. In recent decades, however, educational expansion and exposure to global flows of knowledge and ideas have broadened many women’s horizons, potentially changing their aspirations and expectations while, on the other hand, they continue to face gender inequality in both their families and the labor market. East Asian nations do not do well in league tables of gender equality. In the World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap index 2023, South Korea ranks 105th, China 107th, and Japan 125th out of 146 nations, despite near gender parity in educational opportunities and attainment (World Economic Forum, 2023). These are crude figures, which do not capture the less visible barriers women encounter, but they do serve to indicate the degree of inequality that still exists across much of East Asia. This special issue brings together studies of social and geographical mobility from a gender perspective to advance understanding of the challenges Asian women face and their strategies for dealing with them.

In East Asia today, “an intensification and acceleration in spatial movements of all kinds is reconfiguring the ways in which gender relations are lived and imagined” (Martin & Dragojlovic, 2019, p. 275). Social mobility, on the other hand, has slowed down compared with the era of the so-called “Asian tigers” in the latter half of the 20th century, when the associated rise of the middle classes created more openings on higher rungs of the occupation ladder. After decades of rapid economic growth, social mobility has inevitably lessened as economies matured and growth slowed, especially given global financial crises. Even in China, which began its rapid development decades later than elsewhere in the region, there are signs that opportunities are contracting in the post pandemic climate, with youth unemployment at 21.3% in June 2023 (Statista, 2023). The rapid expansion of higher education in China and its “massification” elsewhere in Asia have led to concerns about graduate unemployment and under-employment (Kang & Mok, 2022; Marginson, 2018; Mok & Jiang, 2018). The remaining social mobility varies across the region, related to degrees of inequality and social closure. There are, however, only a few Asian studies of social mobility with a gender focus (e.g., Abelmann, 2003; Jung & Lee, 2016), which is hardly surprising since the impact of gender was also long neglected in studies of social mobility elsewhere (see Abbott & Payne, 1990). There is plentiful research, however, on the barriers to women’s career advancement in East Asia, which indicates that they have less chance of upward social mobility than men (e.g., Brinton & Oh, 2019; Chin, 2018; Kang, 2026; Liu, 2017).

The gender dimensions of geographical mobility are now widely recognized, with a move away from treating women solely as dependent migrants, the inclusion of a range of reasons why women may move independently and attention to specific forms of feminized migration. Where women continue to move as family dependents, account has been taken of the specific consequences of tied migration. For example, professional women immigrants in the United Kingdom arriving on spousal visas have been found to be at risk of dramatic downward mobility, initially able to find only low status or low skilled jobs (Ogbemudia, 2023; Wei, 2013). Dependent immobility also has consequences. To the extent that women are bound to a specific location by family ties, by a husband’s job or networks, or by children’s schooling, they are less free to pursue social and economic opportunities away from home. In East Asia, even the perception that this is the case can restrict a woman’s chances of career advancement: promotion prospects may be restricted by the assumption that they are unavailable for assignments that involve travel (Song, 2017; Xie, 2021).

These observations illustrate two key points of relevance to the articles in this issue. First, geographical and social mobility, while generally researched and theorized within separate social science fields, are often interrelated, each impacting on the other. Second, migration “upwards,” to a wealthier country or region, or the reverse migration “downwards,” can be associated with either upward and downward social mobility, depending on the characteristics of migrants, the circumstances in which and purposes for which they move, and the socioeconomic and political conditions of their origins and destinations. Although only one contribution to this issue (Li & Song) explicitly links social and geographical mobility, others do so implicitly. By bringing them together here, we aim to open up new areas of enquiry and debate. Importantly, we address the gendering of both forms of mobility, specifically through the varied situations of women in East Asia, including migrants from Southeast Asia. The articles we have included focus on mainland China, Hong Kong, and South Korea, but in this introduction, we contextualize them with reference to the East Asian region as a whole.

Contextualizing and Conceptualizing Women’s Mobilities in East Asia

To understand the context of gendered social and geographical mobility in East Asia it is necessary to establish some background. East Asian nations and territories may share some common features but there are also differences, and it is important to avoid homogenizing and essentializing “Asian characteristics.” All these societies can be considered patriarchal, but in different ways (Sechiyama, 2013). They are often seen as sharing a Confucian heritage, but this is variable in its historical and contemporary influence. Confucianism was dismissed as feudal during the Mao era but has since been rehabilitated and incorporated into the Chinese party-state ideology of “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” It is well entrenched in South Korea but coexists with a strong Christian influence and the two converge in upholding the gender order. Elsewhere in East Asia, Confucianism informs some everyday ideas and practices, especially in family contexts, but competes with other beliefs.

The rapidity with which East Asian territories—particularly South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan—developed into wealthy post-industrial societies has been characterized as producing “compressed modernity.” This concept was developed by Chang Kyung-Sup (2010, 2022) initially to analyze the South Korean experience, but it is also applicable to Hong Kong and Taiwan. Compressed modernity captures this rapid social change: these societies achieved in a few decades what took Western Europe and North America two centuries or more. This is not only a temporal phenomenon, however, but also a spatial one whereby indigenous and foreign, traditional and modern elements jostle, influence, and compete with each other in every aspect of social life (Chang, 2010). Mainland China could be said to have undergone even more rapid economic growth, beginning only in the 1980s. Although it is now the world’s second largest economy, its development has been very uneven, with rural areas and remote regions lagging far behind its major cities. It could be said that only metropolitan China matches Chang’s depiction of compressed modernity. Japan, on the other hand, began its modernization project in the late 19th century and has therefore undergone a longer period of development; its modernity, therefore, can be characterized as semi-compressed (Ochiai, 2014a, 2014b, 2020). Even this degree of commonality is marked by differences, given the diverse histories and politics across the region.

One crucial area of both commonality and differences among East Asian societies, which bears upon women’s opportunities, is in patterns of marriage and gendered divisions of labor. Even when married women are employed, most continue to bear responsibility for housework and childcare, whereas men usually contribute little or nothing. Many women adapt by choosing jobs that allow them to cope with their domestic roles even though they restrict their career advancement (Xie, 2021). There are, however, differences in patterns of women’s employment. For example, in Japan and South Korea, it is common for women to leave the labor market on marriage or after they become mothers, returning to paid work only when their children are older, whereas in China they usually work continuously until retirement (Ochiai, 2014b, 2020). These differences are related to varied family policies and the ideologies and expectations associated with them. Everywhere in East Asia, where childbearing is seen as inextricably tied to marriage and single motherhood is rare, there is a trend toward later marriage and very low fertility, possibly in response to the particular challenges women face (Chang, 2014; Chang & Song, 2010). There are, however, marked differences. In mainland China, marriage is so strongly normative that it is near compulsory; even though women, especially urban educated women, are postponing marriage, over 70% of them are married by their late 20s and over 90% by their mid-30s; they marry considerably earlier than in any other East Asian society. The biggest contrast is with South Korea, where a small minority marry in their 20s and less than two-thirds by their early 30s (Jackson, 2020; United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, 2019). The trend to later marriage and limited childbearing has been highlighted as a paradox of life under compressed modernity: familialist ideology coexists with a retreat from family life, which Chang (2014) attributed to the strains of family responsibilities, especially for women. Indeed, in South Korea, there is a movement of active resistance to marriage and childbirth, and to engaging romantically and sexually with men, among young feminists (Lee & Jeong, 2021).

It is clear that marriage and childbearing impose limitations on women’s occupational choices and freedom of movement. Women’s social and geographical mobility is not only gendered but also profoundly influenced by the institutionalization and practice of heterosexuality, bound up with women’s location within familial and marital relationships as well as the sexualization of women’s bodies and persons. Western feminists have long noted the way in which the social ordering of gender and heterosexuality are bound together (Ingraham, 1996; Jackson, 2006), but this has less often been addressed in East Asian contexts (see Jackson, 2020). Yet these are highly heteronormative and familialist societies where law and policy reinforce the institutionalization of heterosexuality. In East Asia, Taiwan is alone in recognizing same-sex marriage, but even here the heteronormative definition of “family” remains intact (see Chin, 2021). The emphasis on family in East Asian societies, and governments’ attachment to familial norms deemed “traditional,” have often been explained, and justified, by reference to an essentialized notion of Asian culture. But, as Emiko Ochiai has argued: “rather than being a direct expression of cultural values (‘Asian’ or otherwise), familialist social systems are primarily products of socioeconomic conditions and policy decisions made in specific historical settings” (Ochiai, 2014a, p. 217).

Where women have opportunities to move away from their families, this can free them from some heteronormative gendered constraints, albeit within limits and often temporarily. To do so, however, women must already be, in some way, free from familial care obligations—either unmarried and/or childless or able to delegate care to others. Even if free to move, women’s migration is often feminized and reflects women’s positioning within gendered, heterosexualized and/or familial relations. Forms of feminized migration that have received particular attention in East Asian contexts are those of domestic workers and marriage migrants, both of which serve to bolster heteronormative family relationships.

The directions in which women travel are a product of intersections between gender, class, and regional inequalities. The market for paid, live-in domestic help in East Asian societies frees middle class women from housework and childcare and, increasingly, elder care without disturbing the gendered division of domestic labor (Asato, 2014; Constable, 2011; E.Fong & Yeoh, 2020; Lan, 2006). Women from poorer Southeast Asian countries, particularly the Philippines and Indonesia, take up this work in richer East Asian locations, particularly Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore (and further afield). These jurisdictions have organized recruitment processes and specific visas for domestic workers, whereas other East Asian governments, notably those of South Korea and Japan, do not encourage widespread employment of live-in migrant domestic workers. South Korea accepts some migrant care and domestic workers, but most paid domestic work is undertaken part-time by native South Korean women (Asato, 2014). Japan has recruited qualified nurses and care workers for its aging population from overseas since the 2010s but has only accepted a limited number of paid domestic workers, under restricted conditions, since 2014 (Lan, 2018). Mainland China, meanwhile, largely relies on internal migrants, local women, and grandparents to service middle class demand for domestic help. These differences are related to varied patterns of women’s employment across East Asia, especially whether women continue to work when they are married and have young children; to do so has, until recently, been frowned upon in Japan and South Korea but accepted, especially among professional women, in most Chinese societies.

Marriage migration is associated with inequalities within and between Asian societies whereby men from some richer East Asian territories, particularly Taiwan and South Korea, seek wives from poorer countries in Southeast Asia through the mediation of commercial or informal matchmaking (Constable, 2005; Lan, 2019; Yang & Lu, 2010; Yi, 2026). Japanese men have sought wives from different places over time, from South Korea, the Philippines, and mainland China, respectively (Kim et al., 2022; Liaw et al., 2010). There are also cross-border marriages between mainland Chinese women and men from Hong Kong and Taiwan (Chen & Wang, 2021; Friedman, 2014; Ma et al., 2010; So, 2003), and between men in Southwestern China and Vietnamese women from across the border (Huang, 2020). What is common to these forms of cross-border marriage is that many men involved are those disadvantaged in their local marriage markets; they are relatively poor and often from rural areas. The women they marry are usually seeking upward mobility, both in terms of economic conditions and opportunities for self-realization in relatively wealthier societies, but the dream of bettering themselves does not always match the reality.

All these forms of migration in East Asia follow similar routes—from poorer to richer areas—as a means of achieving greater earning power, escaping family surveillance or following the lure of a more modern environment. The diverse forms of migration are often undertaken by distinct populations of women, but this is not always the case. During her adult lifespan an individual migrant woman may be a foreign wife, a sex worker, a domestic worker, or other worker, in the same place or through moving somewhere else, as her circumstances change (Chen & Wang, 2021; Lan, 2008). Furthermore, not all migration is permanent; some may return to their homeland, or may travel back and forth over time. Women’s patterns of movement between geographical and social locations are, therefore, complex. The articles in this special issue may not capture all of this complexity but begin to demonstrate the diverse situations of women as they seek to improve their lives, or the lives of their families, in East Asia’s rapidly changing societies.

The issues discussed fall into three interrelated areas, which we cover in this editorial introduction. First, we consider gendered employment opportunities and obstacles to moving up and moving around, taking account of the range of occupations in which women work in the context of both class inequality and inequalities between richer and poorer societies. Second, we reflect on the interaction between women’s migration/mobility and East Asian family norms and practices. Finally, we address trends in women’s migration and return migration in relation to their wider aspirations and their positionalities in different locations. This special issue illustrates how career women, labor migrants, marriage migrants, and female returnees embrace geographical and/or social mobility but continue to face social and ideological constraints.

Gendered Opportunities and Obstacles in Workplaces

Educational expansion and economic restructuring have contributed to women’s labor market participation in East Asian societies, but their work is often perceived as “women’s work” and imbued with gender implications. Previous studies have illustrated the gendered meanings of career choices: for example, migrant women may take up factory, service, or care work in wealthier locations; some turn to hostess/sex work as a means of survival and advancement, which not only allows them to pursue greater freedom and rewards in a cosmopolitan environment but also exposes them to uncertainties, risks, and gendered stigma (Ding, 2020; Ding & Ho, 2013; Gaetano, 2015). The articles in this special issue also point to a greater variety of employment options for educated women, such as entering the public sector or becoming “white-collar beauties” in big cities (Liu, 2017); these workplaces are regarded as providing greater protections for women or opening up new space for women to raise their status.

Kang et al. (2026) examine how women fare in public sector jobs in South Korea. Similar to the Chinese concept of the “iron rice bowl,” the public sector in South Korea provides greater economic security and a more family-friendly environment for women than other jobs. In extending the “bowl” concept, Kang et al. point to the limitations of such jobs in terms of restricting opportunities for career advancement. In combination with the idea of a “glass ceiling,” this study conceptualizes women’s work in the public sector as a “glass bowl,” a safe but restricted career option featuring limited chances of empowerment and social mobility for women. Kang et al.’s study speaks to mixed findings in the field of women’s career choices in market economies. Although women’s assumed risk-averse and family-oriented tendencies are often related to their lack of social mobility, there is not necessarily a conflict between security and mobility; women may weigh them differently over time. On the one hand, market competition adds to women’s willingness to stay with stable jobs for economic security (Zhang & Pan, 2012). On the other hand, some studies have pointed to the desire of women to escape from gender inequality in paid work and pursue self-development by working for themselves (Song & Li, 2023). Unlike other types of work, the public sector represents the “perfect” job in the eyes of many Asian parents; for them, entering the public sector is already a sign of upward mobility, not to mention the related workplace protections and prestige enjoyed by its employees. Such a dual advantage regarding security and mobility is particularly valued in relation to women’s marriage prospects; jobs that accommodate domestic responsibilities are seen as ideal for women. However, Kang et al.’s study points to hidden dilemmas faced by female employees in a seemingly egalitarian and respectable working environment.

Like South Korea, mainland China has also witnessed the rise of a generation of highly educated young women who have career aspirations. Arianne Gaetano (2026) draws upon ethnographic research in Shanghai to illuminate shifting gender roles faced by young and mobile career women in China, and how they deal with structural and ideological inequalities, especially the gendered predicaments for women who remain unmarried in their late twenties or beyond, who are stigmatized as sheng nü (leftover women). Their educational qualifications and metropolitan exposure have made these women successful elites in big cities compared with older, less educated, and less mobile women in less developed areas. However, these women find that their modern ambitions conflict with traditional gender norms and are unfavorably judged from the perspectives of conservative family members and the wider society.

Unlike highly educated women or skilled migrants, who see some potential for upward occupational mobility in workplaces, many women have become low-end and poorly paid workers in the global market. These women may hope to see the world and pursue self-realization away from familial constraints, but they are usually not well protected in terms of their working and living conditions. Governments tend to provide more favorable migration policies to attract talent rather than loosening restrictions on the migration of ordinary workers (Constable, 2011; E.Fong & Yeoh, 2020; Lan, 2006). Drawing on the Survey of Foreign Domestic Workers in Hong Kong, Song et al. focus on women who moved to take up domestic care work as paid employment. To some extent, women’s human capital is positively related to their chance of moving at a young age when they are childless. However, women’s human capital is found to have limited impact on their long-term mobility; they are legally defined as temporary migrants working on fixed-term contracts, and there are limited opportunities for them to advance their aspirations in more “modern” societies.

These studies help to illustrate the way that women’s education, skills, experiences, and horizons have enabled them to take advantage of the evolving opportunity structures and obtain some limited chances to move across gender, occupational, and locational hierarchies in different workplaces. In some “modern” economic sectors and more developed locations, such as the public sector and big cities, women may rely on their educational qualifications and skill sets to prove themselves. However, women who have become government officials, highly educated professionals or metropolitan care workers continue to face obstacles and barriers in striving for social and geographical mobility due to the persisting workplace stereotypes and social expectations. In South Korea, women’s employment is often discontinuous or disrupted by wifely and/or motherly duties. In China, where it is expected that women will continue to work after marriage, they are expected to continue to be responsible for running their households and raising children. For domestic workers who move from Southeast Asia to Asia’s metropolitan cities, the gender division of labor is perpetuated across borders despite the conversion of women’s unpaid care work to paid employment. In addition to the influence of industry-specific gender expectations and workplace cultures, women’s earning capacity and working experience may impose a threat to male dominance not only in public spheres but also in private arenas, which can lead to defensive responses derived from the longstanding gender order.

Women’s Mobility and Their Family Roles

Compared with men, women’s mobility often needs to be negotiated in relation to their family roles, and women’s enhanced opportunities for migration and mobility continue to be informed by gender norms and family practices. Even for highly educated women who find jobs in big cities, the middle-class ideology of social mobility in Asian societies often continues to judge them using family as an important part of women’s identity making and social positioning (Gaetano, 2017; Xie, 2021). This is particularly evident in China where near compulsory marriage is endorsed by party-state ideology as well as parental expectations. The construct of sheng nü or leftover women reflects this and is associated with intense pressure on young women (Ji, 2015; To, 2015). Gaetano’s contribution to this issue takes up this subject, emphasizing how even in a cosmopolitan city like Shanghai successful young women do not escape. In fact, social mobility to some extent conflicts with women’s chances of marriage; their educational and professional achievements are related to their status of being unmarriageable or “leftover.” It does not mean, however, that marriage solves women’s problems; being either married or unmarried can lead to constraints on women’s mobility given the overt sexism existing in East Asian workplaces. It is common for women to be quizzed on their marital and childbearing situation and future plans in job interviews or be shunted into “less demanding” roles once they have children (Chin, 2018; Liu, 2017). Women do, however, contest these gender norms and their critical reflection can lead to a redefined subjectivity enabling them to forge alternative life plans.

Unlike highly educated or professional women who experience the gendered contradictions of social mobility, less educated or privileged female migrants face different gendered tensions between their migration/mobility and family roles. Song et al. (2026) illustrate how women’s migration is related to motherhood in complex ways. On the one hand, these women struggle between work and family duties and need to deal with the coexisting or competing demands arising from their multiple roles across spatial settings. In global care chains, women from developing countries may delegate care to other family members and relatives in order to take up domestic work in more developed societies (Hochschild, 2000). Despite the feminization of labor migration, it is often difficult to be a good worker and a good mother at the same time. On the other hand, women’s motherhood at the beginning of the migration journey is positively related to their likelihood of multiple migrations over time, moving back and forth between home and overseas work. Repeated migration may point to a need to move away to earn the means to support their families and return to maintain emotional connections with their children. Over the course of their working life, female international migrants may situate their short-term care or service employment in host societies as part of their life-long family commitments, although a few may try to explore alternative life plans other than returning to home countries after the end of contracts. Such complexity suggests that motherhood and migration may not necessarily conflict with each other but interact to shape diverse life trajectories among female migrants.

Compared with labor migration, marriage migration is a sphere where mobility is very obviously intertwined with women’s family roles. Yi’s study (2026) documents how women’s marriage migration from less affluent Asian countries to South Korea has been regulated and monitored by the state, under the assumption that women use marriage migration to strive for upward social mobility. Yi analyzes public documents and policies to reveal how women’s rights as foreign wives are marginalized, with an emphasis on protecting the rights of citizen-husbands and responding to claims from the men’s movement. Although these women tend to realize social mobility via marriage migration, they have faced double barriers as foreigners and as women in exerting their personal autonomy. Given their commodified personhood, these women’s domestic roles and family lives are viewed with suspicion and are closely regulated.

Our collection of articles points to the long-standing patriarchal traditions that regard women’s geographical and social mobility as conflicting with feminine domesticity, as well as how the relationship between the two has been complicated and revised by the outsourcing of domestic work and the rise of cross-border marriage. Under the “labor versus love” dichotomy, women’s economic aspirations may be suspect and (potentially) deviant, their skills discounted, their private life monitored, and their work may continue to be expected to fit family needs. Labor migration and marriage migration may allow women to move around, but they are not always successful in improving their socioeconomic status. In the face of the related social suspicion and moral risks, as well as the evolving opportunity structures and social institutions, women may respond by negotiating more flexible migration/mobility trajectories, including moving away, moving up, moving down, and moving back (Du, 2018).

Moving Away and Moving Back

Migrants are situated in a spatial hierarchy of locations, but their motivations to move away and move back can be highly gendered. The proximity of East Asian societies to much poorer countries in Southeast Asia attracts women from the latter seeking new opportunities. In China’s case, the initial concentration of economic development in coastal cities and later in large inland cities has produced one of the largest migrations in the world—rural labor migration to large cities—including young women factory workers (Pun, 2005) and, as the urban middle class and consumer society expanded, formal and informal service workers (Gaetano, 2015). Migration patterns and trajectories may change when women receive higher education and embrace wider aspirations, and they may seek not only employment opportunities, but also greater autonomy and better lifestyles.

Educational expansion and declining family size in East Asian societies have contributed to a generation of highly educated and confident young women who are ready to develop careers and explore market opportunities, especially in big cities. However, educated young women who migrate to big cities may find that their chances of upward mobility are declining and may want to escape from the competitive metropolitan areas of Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou ( X.Hu, 2013; Meng, 2023). Li and Song (2026), however, suggest that educated young women’s return migration is not solely due to their failure to survive in big cities, but is a combined outcome of their goals (including career aspirations and noneconomic motivations) and positionalities (such as their access to local resources). Although big cities provide a generally more tolerant environment for women to pursue new lifestyles (Gaetano, 2017), young women in this study opted to return to their hometowns in small cities or remote counties in southwestern China. Depending on their motivations and access to local resources, these women are categorized, respectively, as “adventuring” women who returned with strong motivations to explore market opportunities but lacked access to local resources; “settling” women who had neither entrepreneurial ambition nor local resources; “integrating” women who had both ambition and local resources; and “compensated” women who had little ambition but access to local resources. “Adventuring” and “integrating” women moved back mainly to pursue career aspirations, but the former lacked family support and had to rely on their own skills and ingenuity to start up a business, while the latter benefited from family resources and government support to carry out a well-prepared business plan. “Settling” and “compensated” women moved back mainly to be with their families and friends, and their different positionalities also affected their experiences of social mobility as skilled returnees. These women’s return migration has led to diverse outcomes for their socioeconomic standing, as well as their sense of self-realization.

This study speaks to the research on intellectual and skilled migration, previously more concerned with the one-way “brain drain” for sending places and “brain gain” for receiving societies, and now with a broader picture of “brain circulation” (Li et al., 2021). However, limited attention has been paid to the gender dimensions of changes in intellectual or skilled migration trends. The gendered dimensions have been more developed in studies of female migrants in factory work and service work, whose gender traits and family roles have pushed them into circular migration, repeated migration, or return migration (Murphy, 2002). Highly educated women’s motivations to move can be similarly complicated by the desire for self-development and the wish to be with their partners, families, and friends (Clerge et al., 2017). Their multiple goals in migration and return migration may involve career aspirations, family ideals, and sociocultural attachment.

In addition to women’s multiple life goals, it is also crucial to understand the diverse positionalities of migrant women regarding their access to resources and connections in sending and receiving/returning places. In traditional Chinese families, family properties were typically passed onto male heirs; women had limited access to resources in their natal families but were expected to aspire to and strive to move upward via marriage (Song & Luke, 2014). Even in contemporary China, the intergenerational relationship between parents and daughters is often governed by emotional, rather than moral obligations, and many daughters are not fairly compensated for their contributions to their natal families ( A.Hu, 2017). Women’s labor migration arising from such contexts can be seen as striving for resources on their own, although some remittances go to their natal or marital families. The new trends in women’s education and labor migration, however, create the possibility that family may not be just a burden but also a resource (Zhou & Song, 2022). Given the decline in family size and the emergence of “girl power” in Chinese families, many women have discovered new means of mobilizing family resources and exploring economic opportunities (Yan, 2006). The one-child policy, especially in urban areas, has also led to parents’ increasing willingness to invest in their fewer children in education and employment, including singleton daughters ( V. L.Fong, 2004; Xie, 2021). Li and Song’s study suggests that some women may be able to claim greater access to resources from natal families or mobilize a greater variety of support from parents, husbands, relatives, and friends to improve their status. Depending on women’s diverse positionalities, they may continuously weigh different factors and adapt their migration plans as their lives unfold.

These studies suggest the complexity of migration trends, which is not merely driven by economic incentives and core-periphery structures. Moving away is not always due to women’s career ambitions but may be related to their family roles and motherly duties in complicated ways, as suggested by the cases of foreign domestic workers and marriage migrants, and moving back is not always an indication of an unambitious spirit and the desire to settle and take care of the family, as shown by the example of returnee entrepreneurs. Some women return from competitive big cities because their talent is discounted or the market has been saturated, and they see a greater chance of upward social mobility by conducting downward geographical mobility and moving from core areas to peripheral regions. Admittedly, being near one’s family remains one of the main reasons underlying return migration, but a familiar place may also be a location that is characterized by opportunities, innovation, and desirable lifestyles, although these women may not be equally successful in achieving their multiple life goals given their different positionalities.

Conclusion

East Asian societies share some similar cultural characteristics but have witnessed different developmental pathways and ideational shifts. Despite their rapid modernization, familialist values have continued to shape how marriage and childbearing interface with women’s working lives but in the context of new tensions with women’s occupational choices and freedom to move (Song & Ji, 2020). This special issue investigates women’s migration and mobility in varied institutional and cultural contexts in East Asia, and how the social ordering of heterosexuality, reinforced by the political emphasis on the importance of family life, impacts on women’s social and geographical mobility. To some extent, women’s migration/mobility enhances their earning capacity, bargaining power, and control over their life plans, which helps them to escape from gender subordination and obligations in heterosexual family life or redefine family roles and motherly duties by proving themselves and providing financial support. Nevertheless, women’s migration and mobility have continued to be situated within gendered relations, as well as social and spatial hierarchies.

Previous studies illustrate that the ways in which women migrate for work opportunities, from factory workers to sex workers, follow gendered patterns (Ding, 2020; Ding & Ho, 2013; Pun, 2005). This special issue further explores the interrelationship between geographical and social mobility by illustrating how women migrants from less developed locations move to be domestic workers or marriage migrants in more “modern” societies but occupy low socioeconomic positions in their destinations. Highly educated women and women from more advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds are better equipped to move upward in terms of career and geographical hierarchies, but they continue to face censure or suspicion for ignoring family duties and many adapt or compromise their aspirations under traditional gender expectations. Meanwhile, women are found to carry out critical reflections and forge alternative life plans despite social pressure, and their seeming compromise, such as return migration, needs to be understood in the context of their multiple motivations and diverse positionalities.

This special issue points to the mixed trends, motivations, and outcomes of women’s social and geographical mobility. Women’s struggles and strategies in moving away, moving up, and moving back cannot be reduced to the dichotomy between the more developed core areas and the less modern peripheral regions but involve complicated tradeoffs of multiple concerns about family duties and individual desires, as well as economic independence and sociocultural attachment. In these processes, some migrant women choose to move to escape from patriarchal families, but others opt to return and use family property and parental support as among the limited resources they could mobilize in moving upward; some women expect to benefit from better opportunities and modern lifestyles in their new geographical and social locations, but others found a decline of “relative” socioeconomic status in the destinations. Not only do their journeys of self-realization continue to be constrained by workplace stereotypes, family obligations, and social expectations, but women’s migration and mobility may lead to consequences unintended at the beginning of the journeys as their circumstances change. Such mixed tendencies call for more research on women’s shifting strategies and positionalities in geographical and social mobility, under the evolving social expectations and the varied structures of opportunity and constraint in East Asia.