| This dissertation examines Chinese urban-to-urban migrants, a group I have termed transitional urbanites and their everyday encounters with the state, their efforts to establish themselves in an urban environment, and the strategies they use to attain security within a changing economic and social system they find unstable. Since most existing scholarship on China's floating population largely focuses on peasant migrants, these transitional urbanites---a largely unexamined group---provide a different lens for understanding the phenomenon of intermigration. I illustrate how China's transitional urbanites encounter new social spaced created by economic reforms and how the process of individuals interacting and counteracting with state institutions and global connections can produce unexpected conceptions of Chinese identity. The use of transnational spaces, such as joint venture companies and multinational corporations, are adding a new sense of cosmopolitanism to some urban Chinese identities. While transitional urbanites are still embedded within social, cultural and structural webs of a socialist system, their government is caught between encouraging change and maintaining legitimacy through a social structure that cannot keep up with these new changes. Taking the making and meaning of Chinese identity as a form of social knowledge, I explore how residents play an active role in reshaping city spaces and their own lives in urban China. |
