The Intra-city Residential Mobility of Migrant Workers: A Literature Review

Abstract

This chapter is a review of the theoretical and empirical literature about the dislocation and (re)settling of low-income migrant workers. It uses Weberian and Marxian theories to explain the socio-spatial mobility of disadvantaged groups as part of the ‘circuits of capital’, and stresses Henri Lefebvre’s slogan of the ‘Right to the City’ and David Harvey’s discourse on the ‘Accumulation by Dispossession’. Nevertheless, the theories of advanced capitalist societies cannot be directly applied to China, it being a typical transitional economy. The chapter further reviews the studies on China’s urbanization and urban issues, and then specifies the housing inequality issues facing migrant workers which require better analysis using critical geography. Additionally, existing empirical studies on low-income migrant workers’ housing and mobility in Chinese cities, Latin America, and India are reviewed and compared.