In search of exits: Emigration freedom, irregular departures, and state-building in China

• Main Author: LIU, Jiaqi M.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2025
• Subjects: Asian Studies; Demography, Population, and Ecology
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/4155
• Institution: Singapore Management University

The right to leave one’s home country is often assumed as natural rather than empirically examined. This article draws on archival materials and life history interviews with emigrants, smugglers, and bureaucrats to analyze China’s exit policy since 1949. Against standard existing accounts, I argue that China’s stunning shift from a nearly complete ban on emigration to exit liberalization was not simply the result of economic market reforms. The relaxation of exit restrictions for most citizens was conditioned on first developing enhanced bureaucracy and migration documents to more effectively restrict the departures of a small subset of citizens for political reasons, while granting the majority of the population the freedom to leave. China’s reinforced capacity in categorizing the population and controlling their movements also reduced most economic migrants’ need or possibility for irregular departures. Bringing theories of state-building into migration research, this article rethinks the interplay of states and citizens who leave and refines understandings of irregular migration from sending countries’ perspectives.