Cityzenship and the Hukou System

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the discussion of how the hukou system influences transnational Chinese students’ migration to the three megacities and their interpretation and practices of cityzenship. Focusing on how returnees attained hukou in megacities and why they valued it, this chapter shows that the hukou system institutionalises overseas degrees as cultural capitalcultural capital and converts them to localised social rightsrights. This chapter also stresses the importance of a cultural analysis of hukou. Noting that child-centred culture [Yan,Yan, American Anthropologist, 118(2), 244–257 (2016)] and educational desire [KipnisKipnis, Governing educational desire: Culture, politics, and schooling in China. University of Chicago Press (2011)] lead to geographical variation in the value of hukou, with first-tier cities at the top and rural areas at the bottom, this chapter explains why it is necessary to set the family as the basic social unit in the analysis of hukou. Therefore, while conventional scholarship considers how the hukou system regulates internal-urban migrationurban migration by limiting individual migrants’ access to localised social rights [Cheng & Selden, The China Quarterly, 139, 644–668 (1994); Fan, China on the move: Migration, the state, and the household. Routledge (2007); Solinger, Contesting citizenship in urban China: Peasant migrants, the state, and the logic of the market. University of California Press (1999); Wang, Asian Perspective, 29, 85–124 (2005); Zhang & Wang, Citizenship Studies, 14(2), 145–166 (2010)], this chapter argues the hukou system shapes and directs migration by controlling family-based social rights.