The 150 million migrants that left home in pursuit of economic opportunities are
changing the face of China. This book is about this human tide, how it has evolved
over the last two decades, and what it means to China’s city and countryside. By
addressing the hukou paradigm and the permanent migrant paradigm, the book challenges
the assumption that peasant migrants’ main goal is permanent residence in the
city. Rather, the findings show that splitting the peasant household into a permanent
rural segment and a temporary urban segment allows migrants to straddle and benefit
from two worlds. Circulation between the city and the countryside and among places of
migrant work, rather than permanent migration, is becoming a way of life and an
essential means of economic betterment for Chinese peasants. This strategy entails
negotiation within and across households and changes in gender division of labor.
This book combines a macro structural perspective that focuses on the post-Mao state
and a micro bottom-up approach that highlights household strategies to interpret the
massive population movement in China. Based on detailed analysis of census and survey
data and insights from field materials and migrants’ narratives, the book documents and
identifies key forces that shape migrants’ decision-making. It also examines changes in
the composition and spatial pattern of migration, the hukou (household registration)
system and its evolution, differentials between male and female migration, gender relations
and power hierarchy, circular migration, migrants’ experiences in the city, the
impacts of migration on the countryside, marriage migration, and new opportunities and
challenges for the Chinese on the move in the twenty-first century.
The book draws on twenty years of English-language and Chinese-language studies on
migration, and it depicts salient empirical information via maps, illustrations and tables.
Population researchers, Asian Studies scholars, China observers and specialists, and students
ranging from advanced undergraduates to doctoral students will find this book both
informative and stimulating.