Migrant Enclaves Research Articles

Spatial deprivation of urban public services in migrant enclaves under the context of a rapidly urbanizing China: An evaluation based on suburban Shanghai

The rapid economic growth of Chinese cities has attracted an increasingly migrant population. Faced with institutionalized discrimination caused by the Hukou system, however, rural migrants are excluded from local welfare, including certain types of urban public services. By taking suburban Shanghai as a case study, this research adopts the theoretical framework of urban deprivation and evaluates the deprivation level of migrant enclaves in terms of the provisions of public service, including educational, cultural, park, sports, healthcare, public transit, and postal service facilities through a combination of population census data, online and survey data. We then conducted questionnaire surveys and interviews in 14 migrant and local communities in order to acquire detailed socioeconomic information of residents and to understand their degree of satisfaction and information on how often they utilize public services. A multilevel regression model is run to examine the influence of indicators, including the socioeconomic status of respondents and provision of public services, on the degree of satisfaction. The paper concludes with policy implications needed to make spaces more socially equitable and inclusive in the rapidly urbanizing Chinese landscape.

Love in the Time of Nokia: Cultural Change as Compromise in a Cambodian Migrant Enclave

By investigating the social development of a migrant enclave in the context of rapid economic development and circular migration, this paper builds upon recent work emphasising the co-production of place by migrants and their hosts. In doing so, it introduces a longitudinal element to the analysis, highlighting that place in migrant enclaves is shaped by the interaction of not two forces – home and the host environment – but three: home, the non-migrant environment, and the cultural and economic practices developed by existing migrants. This triangular lens also helps to shed light on the linkages between economic and social change in migrant enclaves, demonstrating that migrants' experience of economic development is not direct, but (re)negotiated between these competing influences over time. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Segregation dimensions and development differentials of ethnic enclave

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to employ enclave economy in the perspective of economic sociology to explain the existence and process of the Thai enclave in Hong Kong. Design/methodology/approach – In-depth interviews and case studies are employed in relation to Thai restaurant and grocery shop owners and employees in Hong Kong. Findings – This study is an attempt to explain the clustering of Thai ethnic small businesses in Kowloon City through a discourse on the ethnic enclave economy. The Thai migrant enclave in Hong Kong is explored with dimensions of segregation, namely evenness, exposure, clustering, concentration and centralization (Massey and Denton’s, 1988). This study suggests that these Thai enclave businesses have two differentials compared to the findings of Zhou (1992) in Chinatown restaurants in New York. Social implications – The findings provide evidences for social workers, migrant associations and policy makers in developing ideas of ethnic business enabling. There should be wide range of supporting and welfare policies for the empowerment of migrants and minority ethnic groups. An immigrant enclave should no longer be regarded as a ghetto for many business chances can be found there. Originality/value – Two ethnic economy development differentials are developed. First, ethnicity similarity between the minority group and the majority ethnic enables ethnic business accessing earlier to an interethnic clientele from wider society. Second, internal factors of the ethnic enclave and external factors of the wider society have constrained the diversification of ethnic business.

Invisible migrant enclaves in Chinese cities: Underground living in Beijing, China

China is experiencing an urban revolution, powered in part by hundreds of millions of migrant workers. Faced with institutionalised discrimination in the housing system and the lack of housing affordability, migrants have turned to virtually uninhabitable spaces such as basements and civil air defence shelters for housing. With hundreds of thousands of people living in crowded and dark basements, an invisible migrant enclave exists underneath the modern city of Beijing. We argue that in Chinese cities, housing has been adopted as an institution to exclude and marginalise migrants, through: (a) defining migrants as an inferior social class through the Hukou system and denying their rights to entitlements including housing; (b) abnormalising migrants through various derogatory naming and categorisations to legitimise exclusion; and (c) purifying and controlling migrant spaces to achieve exclusion and marginalisation. The forced popularity of basement renting reflects the reality that housing has become an institution of exclusion and marginalisation. It embodies vertical spatial marginalisation, with exacerbated contrasts between basement tenants and urban residents, heightened fear of the ‘other’, even more derogatory naming, and the government’s more aggressive clean-up of their spaces. We call for reforms and policy changes to ensure decent and affordable housing for basement tenants and migrants in general.

Growth of rural migrant enclaves in Guangzhou, China: Agency, everyday practice and social mobility

Previous studies have attributed the proliferation of rural migrant enclaves in China’s large cities primarily to the constraints limiting migrants’ residential options. Through an ethnographic exploration of Xiaohubei, a migrant enclave with a high concentration of Hubei rural migrants and small-scale garment producers in Guangzhou, this paper sheds new light on the dynamics and implications of the migrant enclaves. It argues that rural migrants are actually active agents who develop a vibrant garment manufacturing cluster by establishing a flexible garment production system, embedding their business within the enclave and maintaining a nationwide translocal network. It also contends that the enclave provides a feasible path through which migrants can achieve social mobility and adapt themselves to the urban environment. This paper concludes with a plea to take into account the agency and everyday practice of rural migrants when understanding the migrant enclaves and a reflection on the existing large-scale and indiscriminate demolition of the enclaves.

Managing Migrant Contestation. Land appropriation, intermediate agency, and regulated space in Shenzhen

This study considers the conditions under which China’s massive internal migration and urbanisation have resulted in relatively governed, less contentious, and yet fragile migrant enclaves. Shenzhen, the hub for rural-urban migration and a pioneer of market reform, is chosen to illustrate the dynamics of spatial contestation in China’s sunbelt. This paper first correlates the socialist land appropriation mechanisms to the making of the factory dormitory and urban village as dominant forms of migrant accommodation. It then explains how and why overt contention has been managed by certain intermediate agencies in the urban villages that have not only provided public goods but also regulated social order. It ends with an evaluation of the fragility of urban villages, which tend to facilitate urban redevelopment at the expense of migrants’ living space. The interplay between socialist institutions and market forces has thus ensured that migrant enclaves are regulated and integrated into the formal city.

Evolving enclave urbanism in China and its socio-spatial implications: the case of Guangzhou

Enclave urbanism has deep historical roots in China, from the earliest forms of enclave residence, i.e. the walled city and courtyard housing, to the contemporary intricate mosaic of enclaves comprising danwei (work unit) compounds, gated commodity housing estates and migrant enclaves. Yet the evolution of enclave urbanism is not simply a convergence with Western urban forms, nor is it a process of historical succession or cultural inertia. The story of enclave urbanism is far more complicated. Exploring China's evolving urban enclaves and their socio-economic implications would add much richness and diversity to the international debates on enclave urbanism. The first half of the paper discusses the evolving processes and dynamics of China's enclave urbanism, with special reference to Guangzhou. The complex dynamics of China's enclave urbanism are evolving around various socio-economic, cultural, institutional and political forces, within which institutional arrangements for urban spatial organisation and social control are playing a fundamental role. To present a fuller picture of the plural socio-spatial connotations of China's enclave urbanism, the second half of the paper unpacks the heterogeneity of urban fabrics and examines how different social groups perceive and represent the social aspects of their lives. Featuring a high degree of heterogeneity within and between different types of neighbourhoods, enclave urbanism in China has entailed a complex relationship between urban form and social fabric. In addition, for various social groups, urban enclave living is endowed with very different social meanings. In gated commodity housing estates, enclave living is an expression of a safe, high-quality and privileged lifestyle. In urban villages, it is a compromise choice involving makeshift urban living resulting from suppressed rights to the city. And, in danwei compounds, it is a lingering lifestyle to which people used to be collectively assigned with no exercise of their own choice and from which they are now emotionally estranged.

Renegotiating Locality and Morality in a Chinese Religious Diaspora: Wenzhou Christian Merchants in Paris, France

This paper explores the social and economic implications of indigenous Christian discourses and practices in the Wenzhou Chinese diaspora in Paris, France. Popularly known as China's Jerusalem, the coastal Chinese city of Wenzhou is home to thousands of self-started home-grown Protestant churches and a million Protestants. Drawing on multi-sited fieldwork, this study provides an ethnographic account of a group of Wenzhou merchants who have formed large Christian communities at home, along with migrant enclaves in Paris. The study shows how these migrant entrepreneurs and traders have brought their version of Christianity from China to France and how they perceive and deal with issues of illegality, moral contingency, native-place based loyalty and national belonging. It highlights the thoroughly intertwined relationship between an indigenised Chinese Christianity and the petty capitalist legacy of coastal southeast China in a secularised, exclusionary European context, and suggests that Christianity provides a form of non-market morality that serves to effectively legitimate Wenzhou's pre-modern household economy in the context of market modernity.

Building an image of Villages‐in‐the‐City: A Clarification of China's Distinct Urban Spaces

Villages-in-the-city (chengzhongcun) as distinct urban spaces in Chinese cities have attracted a lot of scholarly attention, and the term has been variously interpreted. The term "urban village" was initially borrowed and applied to describe this urban phenomenon. While the term in a Western context refers to a planned neighbourhood that features good urban planning and design, the question posed in this essay is: are villages-in-the-city the Chinese equivalent of urban villages? Furthermore, within China, villages-in-the-city are always regarded as migrant enclaves, no different from Zhejiang village or Xinjiang village in Beijing. Are they the same kind of settlement? A primary aim of this essay is to reassert the differences between villages-in-the-city and urban villages that have developed in the United Kingdom. A secondary objective is to explore the variations between villages-in-the-city and Zhejiang village. Through investigating the variations between these urban morphologies, this study attempts to fill gaps in the current literature and hence clarify the misconceptions and confusion about Chinese villages-in-the-city.

Migration and Health Constraints in China: a social strata analysis

Given the massive scale of internal migration in China, access to health services and other health issues not only matter to rural–urban migrants but also have important implications to broad public health concerns. Based on a case study of a particular migrant enclave in Beijing, the study investigates issues concerning environmental health risks of migrants, their health seeking behaviours, and the constraints they encountered in accessing health services with respect to the social strata among migrants. It is argued that the main obstacles to accessing health services are not only the shortage of financial resources among rural–urban migrants, but lie in the institutional blind spot regarding health security provision, rural–urban dualism and a unique household registration system in China. Implications for policy changes are also discussed.

Gated Communities and Migrant Enclaves: the conundrum for building ‘harmonious community/shequ’

This article looks at the Chinese state's community/shequ building effort to govern a more heterogeneous and mobile population in urban China so that a ‘harmonious society’ (hexie shehui) can be achieved. Shequ building initiatives move away from the governance model based on direct government and administrative control, and toward a new model of structured community self-governance. Within some communities, this new model has faced challenges that appear to arise from the new diversity of interests that characterize Chinese cities today. The article acknowledges that social complexity often begets organizational challenges for emerging shequ organizations; but it also suggests that the social simplification of individual shequ is a tendency that has wider negative social implications and needs itself to be resisted.

Urban Housing in China: Market Transition, Housing Mobility and Neighbourhood Change

Re-commodification of urban land and housing has produced a highly complex tenure mix and a much more vibrant and differentiated urban landscape. Land leasing, being a major source of fund to urban municipal governments, fuels the expansionary drive and urban sprawl. It also underlies massive redevelopment of inner city districts. On the other hand, institutionalised separation of the urban from the rural, epitomised by the hukou system, has remained largely intact. Massive influx of migrants has produced a two-class urban society comprising de jure residents and migrants. Differential claim to land ownership under the hukou system has turned villages in former suburban areas into migrant enclaves. The six papers in this theme issue examine various aspects of how individuals and households in Chinese cities have coped with the never-ending changes in the policy and built environment. The focus is on housing behaviour, but neighbourhood issues also feature prominently.