THE STRUCTURATION OF CHINESE MIGRANT WORKERS: INSTITUTIONAL TRANSITIONS, LIFE EXPERIENCES AND SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCES

Chinese migrant workers are workers who (1) migrate from the countryside, where they have the rights to contract farm land, work in agricultural production, and build houses on allotted residential site, and (2) work in non-agricultural sectors of cities and towns, where they don’t receive the same urban welfare benefits as local urban residents. Chinese migrant workers are characterized by their dagong lifestyle, which means “leaving their home in rural villages, going into cities, and working for others, in order to make money.” Though this group of people emerges in the rural-urban migration process associated with the rapid industrialization and urbanization in contemporary China, they are neither complete migrants, nor typical farmers, nor standard workers, as they live between the countryside and cities. The emergence and existence of Chinese migrant workers have contributed to the rapid economic growth of China in the past decades. The future of Chinese migrant workers is not only relevant to their life conditions, but also to the future of China as a whole. While radical scholars see Chinese migrant workers will resist against the present social institutions, conservative researchers argue that Chinese migrant workers will peacefully become urban citizens with economic restructuring and institutional transitions. This study finds that Chinese migrant workers have constituted a new working class in contemporary China, which means that they are a group of workers, who (1) exists in a large number, (2) possesses a stable proportion in the population structure, (3) has a distinctive lifestyle, and (4) stably exists for a relatively long period of time. In other words, they are not a transitional group that will go away soon. Rather, they make up a stable social stratum in the social structure of contemporary China. This structuration process is supported by both macro-institutional arrangements and micro-subjective experiences. At the macro-level, the interaction between the state and market in the process of institutional transition has created several innovative institutional arrangements, which have contributed to the structuration of Chinese migrant workers. These institutional arrangements include (1) the development of household autonomy system in rural villages, (2) the encouragement and regulation of informal employment relationship in cities, (3) the maintenance of differential citizenship with migrant workers receiving less in the cities, and (4) the strengthening of identity-based market ideology. All of these institutional arrangements have affected the emergence and existence of Chinese migrant workers, through framing their identities and conditioning their working and living conditions. Specifically, related to the land tenure system in rural villages, the household autonomy is directly related to their identity as family members. The regulated informal economy shapes their identity as guests in cities. In the background of differential citizenship between rural and urban residents, their semi-citizenship in cities leads to their identity as rural residents. Their Hukou-based market ideology causes their identity as lower-level workers with less human capital. At the micro-level, all migrant workers have their motivations to dagong and tend to accept the dagong lifestyle. Though their motivations are stratified in different maners, four ultimate motivations are personal honor at home, personal future in cities, household needs at home, and family development in cities. While personal honor and personal future are individualistic motivations, household needs and family development are societal motivations. While personal honor and household needs are geographically rural-oriented, personal future and family development are urban-oriented. Treating dagong as a means, Chinese migrant workers’ attitudes to this dagong lifestyle depend on whether it can meet their ends. Therefore, their attitudes are shaped by comparing the dagong lifestyle with its alternatives (education, agricultural production, and businesses and so on). The comparison may make them more optimistic or depressed about the dagong lifestyle. Four types of Chinese migrant workers are identified according to their motivations and attitudes: (1) Adventurous migrant workers want to settle in cities but do not accept the dagong lifestyle; (2) Optimistic migrant workers want to settle in cities and accept the dagong lifestyle; (3) Instrumental migrant workers do not want to settle in cities and treat dagong as a means to meet family needs; and (4) Retreating migrant workers do not want to settle in cities or accept the dagong lifestyle. Furthermore, their motivations and attitudes are changing with their working and living conditions during their migration process. These changes may be radical or conservative. Senior migrant workers, who have earned better working and living conditions in cities, will develop a strong desire to settle in cities, which is called radicalization. By contrast, family burdens might reduce the desire to settle in cities and make them focus on family needs, which is called conservatization. As to their attitudes, when they fail to find alternatives, they tend to form a high degree of acceptance of the dagong lifestyle, which is called justification (becoming optimistic). By contrast, when they feel depressed for the dagong lifestyle and find alternatives, they tend to became negative toward the lifestyle, which is called depression (becoming pessimistic). Out of the four processes, the processes of conservatization and justification become the two main micro-level dynamics of the emergence and existence of Chinese migrant workers. To conclude, this research argues that Chinese migrant workers have constituted a new working class with a distinctive lifestyle in China. As the emergence and existence of Chinese migrant workers involve many aspects of the contemporary Chinese society, this research also has theoretical and empirical implications for studying urbanization, informal employment, migration, social stratification, labor movement, and citizenship

Movement of Zimbabwean immigrants into, within and out of the farm labour market in Limpopo province of South Africa

Magister Philosophiae (Land and Agrarian Studies) - MPhil(LAS)This thesis presents findings from ethnographic research conducted over a period of 17 months in the Blouberg and Molemole local municipalities of Capricorn District in Limpopo province with the aim of exploring mobility patterns of Zimbabwean migrants into, within and out of the South African farm labour market, and understanding how these movements are linked to access to food and other livelihood opportunities. Limpopo serves both as a transit province for Zimbabweans who wish to proceed further south to other provinces of South Africa and a destination for irregular migrants who live and work on white-owned commercial farms. Although constrained mobility, which results from their illegality and remoteness of farms from public services, limit their access to sources of food, irregular Zimbabwean migrants in Blouberg-Molemole area perceive that moving into South African farm labour has improved their food security and livelihood statuses. The South Africa farm labour market provides opportunities to earn income, and enables them to make long term investments in their families back home above immediate individual food security needs. Horizontal and vertical social networks established among Zimbabwean migrants in the Blouberg-Molemole area do not only serve the purpose of facilitating information sharing, but are also forms of social capital on which individual members depend on for their food security and livelihood needs

Co-constructing a new framework for evaluating social innovation in marginalized rural areas

The EU funded H2020 project \u2018Social Innovation in Marginalised Rural Areas\u2019 (SIMRA; www.simra-h2020.eu) has the overall objective of advancing the state-of-the-art in social innovation. This paper outlines the process for co- developing an evaluation framework with stakeholders, drawn from across Europe and the Mediterranean area, in the fields of agriculture, forestry and rural development. Preliminary results show the importance of integrating process and outcome-oriented evaluations, and implementing participatory approaches in evaluation practice. They also raise critical issues related to the comparability of primary data in diverse regional contexts and highlight the need for mixed methods approaches in evaluation

Hispanic Migration to Northeastern Colorado During the Nineteen Twenties: Influences of Sugar Beet Agriculture

Growing beets to process into sugar was a large and important industry in 1920s Northeastern CO. The infrastructure to support the sugar beet industry was built and expanded in the first decades of the 1900s. Beyond infrastructure requirements the sugar beet industry relied on seasonal low skilled field labor. The migration and settlement patterns of sugar beet laborers in the 1920s to Northeastern Colorado were influenced by the actions of the Great Western Sugar Company. In 1909, German-Russian immigrants were the dominant demographic working the beet fields in Northeastern CO but by 1927 that trend shifted overwhelmingly to families of Mexican and Mexican American heritage. These Hispanic families came from the Southwestern US as well as Mexico and primarily spent the summer living at the beet fields. During the winter some laborers returned to the Southwest or Mexico, others lived in poor areas of Denver, and others still lived on the outskirts of Northeastern Colorado towns. In Fort Collins, Greeley and other Northeastern Colorado towns, the Great Western Sugar Company subsidized housing for select Hispanic beet labor families. This thesis advances understanding of Colorado history as it relates to early Hispanic migration and offers a case study in migration forces. While social networks are important to patterns of labor movement, the recruitment efforts and housing initiatives of the Great Western Sugar Company were highly influential

Rural Social Safety Nets for Migrant Farmworkers in Michigan, 1942–1971

In the 1960s, farmers pressed trespass charges against aid workers providing assistance to agricultural laborers living on the farmers’ private property. Some of the first court decisions to address these types of trespass, such as the well-known and frequently taught State v. Shack (1971), limited the property rights of farmers and enabled aid workers to enter camps where migrants lived. Yet there was a world before Shack, a world in which farmers welcomed onto their land rural religious groups, staffed largely by women from the local community, who provided services to migrant workers. From the 1940s through the 1960s, federal, state, and local law left large gaps in labor protections and government services for migrant agricultural laborers in Michigan. In response, church women created rural safety nets that mobilized local generosity and provided aid. This article uses Michigan as a case study to argue that these informal safety nets also policed migrant morality, maintained rural segregation, and performed surveillance of community outsiders, thereby serving the farmers’ goals of having a reliable and cheap labor force—ultimately strengthening the economic and legal structures that left agricultural workers vulnerable

Internal migration in Northern Ghana: understanding the integrative challenges of migrants in Tamale Metropolis

Purpose: Successful integration of migrants in any society has a very vital impact on the wellbeing of migrants. The study therefore uses descriptive statistics to analyse the integrative challenges of internal migrants in the Tamale metropolis of Northern Ghana. Research methodology: The study adopted the mixed-method approach and non-probability sampling techniques to select 120 internal migrants for the study. Results: The results revealed that economic factors (46.7%) accounted for most reasons cited for migrating. Language barriers (24.2%) and higher cost of living (19.2%) were the most encountered challenges and a proportion of 10.8 per cent reported not having encountered any difficulty. Limitations: The study explored all forms of internal migration in the Metropolis. However, it failed to explore the occurrence of international migration given the growing influx of international migrants in the study area. Contribution: The outcome of the study will advance knowledge on the challenges faced by migrants within the Metropolis and measures could be taken to resolve some undesired experiences. Additionally, the study will make a valuable contribution to the limited migration literature in the North

The production of space and construction of frontier: Contesting a Cambodian resource landscape

This research employs Henry Lefebvre’s concept of “the production of space” and the notion of frontiers – empty or unused space – to explore the complex spatial contestations over resource landscapes in Cambodia. The study focuses on the construction of frontiers by examining how socio-spatial relations are produced in relation to how the frontier is constructed. In this research, two groups of actors and processes are involved: (1) the state and its associated elite actors/agencies who employ spatial representations (maps) to organise the landscape; and (2) the local actors who construct and organise space by directly living in it. Regarding the state-based spatial arrangements, this research employs critical cartography to examine formal boundaries made by the state and its associated agencies, including the political elites, conservation organisations and development agencies. In regard to informal local level spatial arrangements, place-making processes are examined to understand how land and resources are organised by local actors. The thesis focuses on one case study site located in Northwest Cardamom – an upland area of the western part of Cambodia near the border of Thailand and a former Khmer Rouge stronghold. This thesis argues that frontier – empty or wasteland – is not an absolute geographical space, but a produced space. Frontier construction is at the centre of land and resource conflicts over the landscape. This produced space is the outcome of dialectical relations of spatial idealisation, the representation of space and direct spatial interaction among different actors whose interests are to access and control the landscape. This research found that being able to use maps, the state and its associated elite actors and agencies are able to formally exclude local communities from accessing land and resources by making landscape appear empty or unused. The local spatial organisation and socio-spatial relations are also constructed within the notion of a frontier, which is the outcome of a traumatic political history and physical traits of the landscape. With the long-term experience of organising local landscapes, the ex-Khmer Rouge (ex-KR) tend to have more control over land and resources compared to new in-migrants moving to search for land. Two forms of interaction between state-based and local-based spatial representation and organisation can be observed. The first is state enforced abstract boundaries which directly exclude people from accessing land and resources. The second is state-based private land titling which delegitimises local villagers’ land claims