Wednesday 16:00-16:30 Laurie Taylor discusses the latest social science research.
11 April 2007
MIGRATION IN CHINA China now possesses the fourth largest economy in the world and it is set to become the world’s second biggest within 10 years.
The boom cities along the country’s Eastern Coast are drawing huge numbers of people from the countryside in a migration of unprecedented scale. Now it is estimated that 200 million people, a quarter of the country’s workforce is counted as China’s ‘floating population’.
Because of the peculiarities of China’s household registration system these migrants do not have access to schools, hospitals or other aspects of state care and the protests are growing every year. They are second class citizens with the potential to create massive disharmony within the Chinese state.
Can the situation be sustained? Can the Chinese economy continue its miraculous growth without the granting of democratic or other human rights to its population?
Laurie is joined by Caroline Hoy who has conducted fieldwork on internal migration in China; Fulong Wu, Professor of East Asian Planning and Director of the Urban China Research Centre at Cardiff University; Will Hutton, who recently published his book entitled The Writing on the Wall: China in the 21st Century and Professor Nigel Harris, author of The New Untouchables: Immigration and the New World Worker.
Additional information:
Caroline Hoy, Principal consultant at Hall Aitken; formerly a member of the Department of Urban Studies at the University of Glasgow.
Migration and Populations in China: Moving Peoples and Creating Change Series: Routledge Research in Population and Migration Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 9780415187749 ISBN-10: 0415187745
Contemporary Minority Migration, Education, and Ethnicity in China Robyn Iredale Naran Bilik Wang Su Fei Guo Caroline Hoy Publisher: Edward Elgar Pub ISBN-10: 1840644435 ISBN-13: 978-1840644432
Socio-economic Impacts of Uyghur Movement to Beijing byHoy, C. and Ren, Q., (2003) Chapter 9 in China's Minorities on the Move: Selected Case Studies edited by: Robyn Iredale; Naran Bilik; Fei Guo ME Sharpe, Armonk, NY, 155-174
Fulong Wu, Professor of East Asian Planning and Development and Director of the Urban China Research Centre at Cardiff University
China's Emerging Cities: The Making of New Urbanism Publisher: Routledge,an imprint of Taylor & Francis Books Ltd ISBN-10: 0415416175
Will Hutton, Chief Executive of The Work Foundation
The Writing on the Wall: China in the 21st Century Publisher: Little, Brown ISBN-10: 0316730181 ISBN-13: 978-0316730181
Nigel Harris, Emeritus Professor of the Economics of the City (retired), University College, London
The New Untouchables: Immigration and the New World Worker Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd ISBN-10: 014014689X ISBN-13: 978-0140146899
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