Farmers to urban citizens? Understanding resettled households' adaptation to urban life in Shaanxi, China

Abstract

Rural to urban resettlement is a widely used poverty alleviation strategy in China's Shaanxi Province, with roughly 250,000 poor households being resettled between 2016 and 2020. This is a huge development intervention designed and implemented by the Chinese state that aims to fundamentally transform people's livelihoods, yet few studies have examined how rural people involved in these resettlements have adapted to their new urban life. This article aims to analyze this adaptation process. Based on a survey of 1285 poverty alleviation resettlement (PAR) households in Shaanxi, we examine the socioeconomic and identity transformations brought about by urbanizing poverty resettlements, paying particular attention to resettled households' heterogeneous experiences of adaptation. Our analysis complicates the picture of a managed, smooth transition from farmers to urban citizens, raising issues of identity, economic insecurity, employment opportunities, and rural land as security. Economically, in the face of increased expenditure and few savings, most households have mixed income sources, and most still retain ties to agricultural land. Different trajectories are evident among households, with uneven access to nearby off-farm employment. Socially, strong social relations are evident, but there is weak engagement in more formal community institutions. And in terms of identity, only a small proportion of households self- identified as “urban”. Our findings highlight how, in the face of rapid change, PAR households strategically float between the rural and the urban.