Migrants in between: rural migrant families' practices of settlement in a small but rapidly urbanizing Chinese city

• Main Author: Zhao, Haoyu
• Other Authors: Patrick Williams
• Format: Thesis-Doctor of Philosophy
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2024
• Subjects: Social Sciences; Migration; Urbanization; Small cities; Family relationships; Settlement patterns; Housing
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/180751
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Since economic reforms started in the late 1970s, China has experienced rapid urbanization with a massive influx of rural migrants into cities. In contrast to most rural migrants’ temporary or informal settlements in Chinese megacities, many migrant families in small cities have managed to obtain urban housing and settle there. However, there is limited research paying attention to the housing strategies of these migrant families and their migration patterns and living arrangements after becoming homeowners in the context of changing institutional barriers and housing booms. Therefore, this study focuses on rural migrants who have managed to obtain housing in a small Chinese city, Jiaonan in Shandong province. This thesis examines how rural-to-urban migrant families have settled in a small but rapidly urbanizing city. It builds on the literature explains migration patterns in the Global South and develops a dynamic analytical framework to look at the interplay between family dynamics and structural change. This study employs a multi-sided ethnography in urban Jiaonan and migrants’ villages of origin to not only investigate rural migrant families’ housing strategies in the city but also trace their relations with rural villages. The main research question is answered from three interrelated dimensions: migrants’ negotiation with changing institutional barriers of accessing housing; the dynamic relations between young migrants’ settlement intention and intra-family relationships; migration patterns and living arrangements across rural-urban divide after owning housing in the city. This study demonstrates migrant families maintain dynamic relations with rural villages after they own urban housing and in the city to maintain intergenerational relationships and meet changing reproductive needs. The rural house is a basic anchor for keeping thick relations with rural villages. Therefore, it challenges previous duailist understanding on permanent and temporary migration. This study argues that the rural as a governmental category plays a significant role in migrant families’ settlement strategies and patterns because the rural is where disadvantaged groups of migrants have been included, entitled, and therefore they can exercise their agency to utilize. However, the rural housing and land system, under the influence of land-centered urbanization, has transitioned from an inclusive system to a static exclusive system subject to urban development plans. Rural migrants may be forced to become permanent settlers in the city if they lose their rural houses. This, to a certain extent, undermines the agency of the vulnerable groups of rural migrants to negotiate the changing rural-urban structure and intra-family relationships.