Intergenerational relations: Paradoxical integration of feelings, opportunities and issues

Through development of the concept of paradoxical integration and drawing on in-depth interviews, this article brings a critical perspective to the study of intergenerational relationships by sociologically addressing labour migration within China. China’s massive population movement, from rural areas to urban employment, is facilitated by the relocation of grandparents, who, in traversing geographic space, significantly contribute to social and economic production by reconfiguring intergenerational family relationships. The paradoxical integration approach identifies the interdependent nature of contrastive elements related to function and significance, including rural and urban, production and care, and ambivalent emotions. This approach also reveals organically generative characteristics of social phenomena in relation to contemporaneous problems and opportunities, including (re)employment, social ties and health-related issues. In addition, this approach identifies reversal in transformation of gendered elderly support, gendered power, gendered work, as well as strategies to resolve intergenerational issues. This article addresses the pervasive practice of explaining Chinese data and relationships with theories informed by North American and Western European experience. It demonstrates by method and example the means through which concepts developed in non-Western social space can reinvigorate empirical research and theory construction in the study of intergenerational relations.