Embodied Paths to Belonging: Feminist Reflections on Walking Interviews With Migrant Women in Beijing

This article explores how young rural-to-urban migrant women working in Beijing’s beauty industry negotiate belonging through their everyday movements across the city. Drawing on walking interviews conducted as part of a broader qualitative project, the study situates mobility and embodiment within feminist epistemologies that emphasise situated and relational knowledge. Walking with participants revealed how belonging is continually produced and disrupted through bodily rhythms, sensory experiences, and spatial interactions. Three intersecting processes were identified: conditional belonging, where ease and recognition fluctuate with time, audience, and gendered space arrangement; everyday sanctuary, in which fragile spaces such as parks and dormitories offer moments of recovery; and aspirational mapping, which encompasses both dissonance and moments of realised success as women navigate the city’s commercial and symbolic hierarchies. These findings reveal that belonging is a fragile, affective achievement rather than a fixed condition, mediated by the body’s relation to urban space and time. Methodologically, the study demonstrates the value of walking as a feminist mode of co-presence and knowledge production. Theoretically, it advances understandings of how mobility practices materialise the politics of belonging, vulnerability, and desire in the lived landscapes of contemporary urban China.