This article examines how rural young people cope with societal change by migrating to work in the city, in the process renegotiating the life course and transforming rural life. Given rapid urbanisation and uneven growth, rural-urban labour migration has increasingly become a “normal” experience for young peasants entering working life. What is less clear is how these rural-urban migrant workers negotiate the emerging opportunity structures and mobility in the life course and what it means for rural life.
