Civic Stratification: The Logic Of Domestic Migrants Inclusion And Exclusion

Civic stratification means that the social economic inequality affects the institutionalization of citizenship,making citizenship itself a force-field,thus affecting the life chances and social identities.This research looks into the Municipal Points-based System(jifenzhi),including a case study of City A and literature study on other cities,to discuss the mechanisms and outcomes of the Points-based System.According to the research,based on “meritocracy principle”,the Points-based System plays the part as the mechanism elaborating rights and creating a hierarchical structure of citizenship among domestic migrants.So comes the civic stratification.Through the Points-based system,the young and rich get local urban hukou more easily while migrants with low social economic status are still excluded from the basic public services provided by municipal government.In addition,under the existing framework of finance and taxation system,the vacancy of planned quotas indicates that hukou of different cities have different contents of public services,causing civic stratification on terrestrial perspective.This terrestrial perspective of civic stratification creates the space for local urban government to initiate policies which,on the one hand,trade hukou for the talents,the real estates purchasing capacity and so on,while on the other hand,excludes migrants with low social economic statuses.In order to provide equal accesses to public services with migrants,the key issue is to change the existing finance and taxation system,giving substantial guarantees to equal citizen statuses and rights exercises from the nation state.The theoretical assumption of Marshallian citizenship is the homogeneity of citizenship,which cannot reflect the differentiatedcitizenship.The term “civic stratification” illustrates the process of how social economic inequality makes citizenship itself as a “force field”.Thus,this theoretical standpoint can be applied to the revealing of the mechanism of the hierarchical structures of citizenship widespread in contemporary urban China.