Research On Nomadic Migrants’ Society And Their Space

The semi-urbanization people in China is largely composed by the rural migrants in cities. They are highly focused by the new urbanization strategy that emphasizing on "people oriented urbanization" After the broader shift in population floating policy, the rural migrant groups are becoming more and more complicated, and their jobs, life status and settlement intentions are also growing in diversity.Basing on the theory of socio-spatial dialectic, this paper focuses on social space study of rural migrants, choosing brick-transport workers in Yangzhou as the research objects. By questionnaire, interviewing and interventional observation, the paper illustrates the physical space and social space of them, both from the aspects of individual worker and their groups. It displays the life status and intention for future of these workers, who represent the wide migrant groups, without formal and organizational jobs in the city, and that their social space is nomadic. At last the paper sets out the vision for future development of the migrant groups in the background of new urbanization policy.The research finds that brick-transport workers are pushing by city demolition and keep moving for living like nomadic tribes, so the expressions of their localized social space are interfered by physical space changing. The group’s social space presents characteristics of marginalization and nomadicity: they mainly live by the fringe of urban-rural area and are kept access to limited public facilities, but their business has fastened to city demolition projects, which manifests paradox in working and living. As for the individuals, in contrast to those who are of high urbanism, their social space presents characteristics of duality and rural ism:urban space just means a tool for living earning and they still keep traditional lifestyle. Stuck in tradition and modern, rural and urban space, they have not achieved a successful transition of urbanization.In the summary and further discussion part, the paper considers social space of these brick-transport workers to be a rural community implanted in urban economic system. Engaged in non-agricultural activities does not bring them substantial social capital for becoming urban citizens, their living and association still rely on origin relationship between peers. In this way, rural-relationship community is of importance for these disorganized workers to live in cities. In the discussion part, the paper gives a further thinking that, in the whole semi-urbanization groups, there is rural-urban continuum basing on urbanism level. The brick-transport workers, represents disorganized employment groups, are at the bottom of this continuum. They act like nomadic people and living in the urban-rural crack, possessing low level of urbanism. In the future urbanization process, these swings will hesitate between country and city for a long time, their settlement intention will depend on free choice between new rural construction and urban system improvement.The paper is organized as follows:Chapter Ⅰ is background. The paper explains the origins and foundation of the research, from society background and literature background. The literature review goes in two ways, including sociology and geography research of migrant groups.Chapter Ⅱ is the research issue and objects. The paper puts forward research problem, framework and methods, and have a summary description of the study area and object groups.Chapter Ⅲ is analysis on social space of migrant groups. It illustrates the life status of them from dwelling space, living space and business network, finding that they keep moving for living like nomadic people. At last it concludes the main characteristics of migrant space.Chapter Ⅳ is analysis on migrant individuals. By using the concept of "urbanism", the paper dissects the characteristics of individual’s social space from behavioral space and social network. Behavioral space analysis is based on the observation of two typical migrants, and social network analysis is based on relationship net and settlement intention, revealing the urban integration condition of migrants.Chapter Ⅴ is discussion on nomadic migrants in rural-urban continuum. The paper evaluates the brick-transport groups in social space characters, meanings and so on. It also puts forward the concept of "rural-urban continuum" in semi-urbanization groups, to discuss the future of these disorganized workers, and raises some policy advices for people management.Chapter Ⅵ is conclusions and discussions. It mainly summarizes the research conclusions and innovation points in the study and proposes research prospects.