Xisai Song

This book examines the politics and ethics of chronic disease care in contemporary China. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the hemodialysis ward of a county public hospital in southwest China, this project focuses on a group of young and middle-aged rural migrant workers suffering from kidney failure, who return to their hometown to receive dialysis. It explores how they negotiate with chronic treatments and navigate their lives back at home. “One Foot in the Grave” offers an in-depth ethnographic analysis of how Chinese rural migrant workers struggle with the afterlives of migration, an understudied aspect of the economic development of reform era China. It also adds new insights into what constitutes equitable chronic diseases care in China and beyond.