Policing and racialization of rural migrant workers in Chinese cities

Abstract

This article examines policing practices that produce forms of race-like status for rural migrants in Chinese cities. I analyse new forms of ‘natural attributes’-based discrimination and regulation of the rural-urban divide based on hukou, the body of laws that control household registration and movement of workers within China's developing urban industrial order. I argue that rural migrant workers are policed in cities through a process by which new disadvantageous racializing identifications take shape, reinforcing stereotypes of rural migrants' bodily features. This research applies critical race theory to issues generally analysed through the lens of class. Contextualized within China's market-oriented reform, economic growth and social transformations, this approach to racialization endeavours to understand the intricate cultural and material aspects of rural-urban migration in China.