Doctoral Dissertation Research: China's Emerging Slums During Urban Expansion: The Case of Beijing, Henancun, and Recycling

Michigan State University, East Lansing MI

Investigators

Abstract

For two decades from 1992 to the end of 2011, China has maintained economic growth at rates of ten percent or more per year, but very large numbers of China's rural-to-urban migrants face discrimination and exclusion in urban environments in terms of housing, job opportunities, education, and other basic entitlements. The United Nations estimated that more than one-quarter of China's urban population lives in slums, even as government rhetoric and many research reports consistently have denied the existence of large-scale slums in China. Other studies have provided evidence showing that rural migrants remain the most disadvantaged group in China, experiencing socially, economically, politically, and spatially marginalized status. Unlike conditions in many developing countries, China's state land ownership, authoritarian control of squatting, and hukou-related housing injustice have undermined the relatively stable spatial and temporal qualities that characterize most slums and created an obscure, often-hidden geography of the lived experiences of the urban underclass. This doctoral dissertation research project will be based on slum and ethnic enclave studies and will develop a proto-slum framework to understand the reconfiguration of slums in China and the mechanisms whereby migrants sustain their livelihoods and businesses in rapidly urbanizing environments. The doctoral student will consider Henan migrants in Beijing as the project's central case study. Following their first wave of migration to Beijing in the mid-1980s, the rural household registration status, limited means, and discrimination have gradually channeled Henan migrants into the informal recycling business and have led to the formation of various Henan enclaves in Beijing. From the late 1980s to the early 2010s, these enclaves have been subjected to repeated demolition and relocation processes. The student will use mapping and spatial regression modeling based on land use, observations, and questionnaire and interview data to investigate the spatial-temporal geography and the internal dynamics within slum-condition Henan enclaves in Beijing. He will focus special attention on ascertaining the geography of the proto-slums in Beijing and what structural factors account for the spatial and temporal dynamics of migrant communities and their ability to sustain livelihoods in Beijing as well as the strategies disadvantaged groups use to secure their livelihoods and right to the city within socially, politically, and spatially excluded and environmentally threatened communities. This project will draw on an interdisciplinary approach to develop new information and insights into the geography of Chinese slums, which have rarely been studied. It will incorporate literature focusing on slums, enclaves, and migration from developing and developed countries and will use a spatial-temporal framework explain how proto-slums develop and function in the Chinese context. The project will provide practical information on the development of and spatial-environmental challenges faced by slum-condition communities in rapidly expanding cities, and it will help to identify policies addressing urban inequality and injustice in China as well as ways to facilitate integration of migrants into the society. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.