Rethinking displacement in peri-urban transformation in China

Abstract

This article examines the spatiality of peri-urban villages in Guangzhou, offering an analysis that critically rethinks displacement as a phenomenon that need not be bracketed by the narrow spatial understanding of “physical uprootedness.” Building on ethnographic fieldwork research in Yonghe village, this article identifies and examines three mechanisms and forms of marginalization and dispossession that Chinese villagers have experienced during in situ urbanization: (1) large-scale expropriation of farmland to economic development zones in the mid-1980s; (2) subjection of collective assets to industrial land use by the planning authority since 1991; (3) on-going exposure to industrial pollution. The analysis shows that each of these factors is contingent on the previous one, and that villagers’ engagement with recent injustices cannot be separated from their disadvantaged positions in the past. This article argues that, while overt displacement by state-led development is a clear violation of the “right to the city,” in situ marginalization and dispossession without physical uprooting is equally problematic and exploitative.