What Is Home?

The National Development and Reform Commission officially approved the Water Control Project Jiudianxia 2006. The reservoir inundation area of Hydro project Jiudianxia impacted a total of 3 counties, 7 rural towns and 23 villages, involving a total of 1001 households, 4382 population, among whom there are 296 Tibetans. Since May 2008, the migration gradually moved to settlements--Bai Qibao, Anxi County of Jiuquan City, which is located in the northwest of Gansu Province,. The distance of migration is more than 1400 km, which means that the migrants had to cross the whole province. Due to the far relocation of settlements, the great difference of environment and high proportion of minorities, this project is obviously different from the past migrations, and it also reveals many new problems,Rebuilding homes become a common challenge for both migrants and the local government. What is the concept of "home" in migrants' opinion? Did the progress of the reconstruction of their homes go on smoothly? What is the respective role of the Government, the business owner and migrants? This thesis aims at answering these questions.The author did her fieldwork in the No.2 village for one month. By participant observation and intensive interviews, she studies the concept of "home" of the local migrants include not only material elements, but also the communities, livelihoods, beliefs, ceremonies and Faith symbols, On the basis of which the author intends to explore a reasonable approach to solve the problems appearing in the respects of resettlements, compensation benefits and placement of the migrants in the western ethnic minority areas. In the meantime, this paper means to emphasize the necessity of management and supervision to take the migrants as a principal part to participate in the process of decision-making, by which the mainstream society is probably willing to provide more comprehensive compensation and resettlement subsidies for the ethnic migrants. Moreover, it is also significant to introduce the migration experience in the western minority areas to the other parts of China and make some disciplinary contributions to the harmonious development of the economic projects and ethnic minorities as well as the sustainable development of the ethnic communities' cultures.