ABSTRACT
Since the start of economic reforms in the late 1970s, internal migration, along with urbanisation, has brought about the most profound social changes in China. With China’s rural migrant workers numbering in the hundreds of millions and dominating the labour market in the country’s fastest-growing regions, this group embodies China’s most intractable problems of socioeconomic stratification. For this reason, the experiences of this social group have become an important area of inquiry. Centring on the figure of rural migrants in Chinese cities, this chapter aims to do three things. First, it provides an account of how the hukou system – the residential registration system – has shaped the pattern of China’s rural-to-urban migration and the formation of the socio-political identities of migrant individuals. This is followed by a discussion of the diversity and internal differences within the rural migrant cohort, paying attention to how gender, place and type of employment intersect to shape varying levels of subaltern subjectivity and political consciousness. Finally, the chapter reviews the main perspectives from both critical scholarship and public discourses on the subjects of rural-to-urban migration and the experiences of rural migrant individuals.
