Identity, exclusion, and remittance: State and the migrant household in contemporary China

The dissertation examines rural-to-urban labor migration in China and analyzes how institutions, markets, and household dynamics affect the process and outcome of rural migration. It is organized around three analytical chapters, with the first presenting a systematic evaluation of the migrant control policies since the 1980s and the latter two focusing on empirical analyses. Building on existing migration paradigms, the study addresses three sets of questions using field research findings as well as data from the 2002 Beijing Impoverished Migrant Family Study and the China Health and Nutrition Survey: First, how was rural-to-urban migration in China controlled by the state, and what were the mechanisms of domination used in regulating population mobility across boundaries? Next, given the economic opportunities of rural migrants in the cities, what role does institutional exclusion have on migrant social organization and mobility at destination. Finally, what impact does migration have on the emerging private sector in China; specifically, does migration affect the likelihood of household-run enterprises at the sending regions?;The first analytical chapter provides an institutional and historical account of the rural-urban migration policy in contemporary China and how the bureaucratized structure produced categorical boundaries within the Chinese society. Drawing on Foucault's framework of governmentality, the study explores the processes of regulation, discipline, and subject-making within China's migrant control regime. The study identifies two significant strategic shifts in China's migrant control regime that shaped the stratification system: The shift of China's household registration system (hukou) from inter-provincial control to localized control of migrant movements, and the commodification of migrants in the urban regions. I argue that the loosening of central rural-to-urban migration restrictions does not represent a retreat of state power, but rather, indicates a shift of the state's governing rationale from a centralized to a localized form of population control. As such, the categorical boundaries between rural migrants and local residents at destination remain stagnant despite policy changes.;The second analytical chapter investigates the mechanisms that produce and stabilize stratification, specifically, by examining the exploitation of migrants in the cities. Situating the study in a grounded analysis of impoverished migrant workers in Beijing, I examine how institutional inequalities are lived-out as social inequalities. Specifically, the study analyzes the conditions of inequality and how the embeddedness of categorical boundaries in social and market structures contributes to sustaining unequal relationships, as well as the coping strategies used by migrants at destination to mitigate the risks associated with exclusion. It shows that despite the onset of market opportunities for rural migrants, the inequality they experience at destination continues to undermine their economic mobility.;The third analytical chapter explores migration and remittance and their impact on household income-generating strategies in the sending regions; specifically, whether sending households are more likely to engage in household-run businesses. Results show that remittance has little impact on income diversification of rural migrant household. Instead, return migration---whether a household member was previously a labor migrant---has a stronger correlation with the propensity of households to operate private businesses. In addition, political and social capital, such as whether a family member is serving as the local party official, the educational level of the household, as well as the availability of labor, affect the likelihood of the rural household to operate business enterprises. For smaller households, the departure of male, young members may actually decrease the likelihood of diversifying local income-generating mechanisms. Meanwhile, agriculturally oriented income-generating mechanisms, such as operating a sideline business of raising livestock or fishery, is more strongly correlated with households with a large pool of female labor. The study demonstrates that similar to kinship and native-place networks, the sending household plays a critical role in the resource accumulation process of migration. Migration, as mechanism of mobility for rural labor migrants, is not a unidirectional dynamic. Rather, through remittances, return migration, and sending household decisions, migration has a developmental impact on the sending regions. The study thus highlights the need for a dynamic understanding of the migrant decision-making process in the sending regions.