Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-pvkqz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-07T09:18:34.740Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Segmented Incorporation: The Second Generation of Rural Migrants in Shanghai*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 January 2014

Pei-chia Lan
Pei-chia Lan*
Affiliation:
National Taiwan University. Email: pclan@ntu.edu.tw.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article looks at the changing frameworks for the institutional and cultural incorporation of second-generation rural migrants in Shanghai. Beginning in 2008, Shanghai launched a new policy of accepting migrant children into urban public schools at primary and secondary levels. I show that the hukou (household registration) is still a critical social boundary in educational institutions, shaping uneven distribution of educational resources and opportunities, as well as hierarchical recognition of differences between urbanites and migrants. I have coined the term “segmented incorporation” to characterize a new receiving context, in which systematic exclusion has given way to more subtle forms of institutional segmentation which reproduces cultural prejudice and reinforces group boundaries.

Keywords

internal migrationpeasant workerChinasecond generationsegmented assimilation

Information

Type
Articles
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 217 , March 2014 , pp. 243 - 265
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

*

I thank Tseng Yen-Fen, Hyunjoon Park, Martin Whyte, Macabe Keliher and two anonymous reviewers for their comments. I also appreciate the assistance of Chen Yenchun, Ho Xiao, Li Yao-Tai, Jiang Hoching, Xiong Yihan, Ma Li, Ling Minhua, Wu Jieh-Min and Chen Chih-Jou. The research was supported by a grant from the National Science Council in Taiwan (NSC 97-2410-H-002-064, 98-2410-H-002-136). This article was completed during my visiting fellowship at Harvard Radcliffe and Yenching Institute in 2011–12.

References

Alba, Richard. 2005. “Bright vs. blurred boundaries: second-generation assimilation and exclusion in France, Germany, and the United States.” Ethnic & Racial Studies 28, 20–49.Google Scholar
Alba, Richard, and Nee, Victor. 2003. Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration. London: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Anagnost, Ann. 2004. “The corporeal politics of quality (suzhi).” Public Culture 16, 189–208.Google Scholar
Barth, Fredrik. 1996 [1969]. “Ethnic groups and boundaries.” In Sollors, Werner (ed.), Theories of Ethnicity: A Classical Reader. New York: New York University Press, 294–324.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chan, Aris. 2009. “Paying the price for economic development: the children of migrant workers in China,” November, http://www.china-labour.org.hk/en/node/100013. Accessed 10 August 2010.Google Scholar
Chan, Kam Wing, and Buckingham, Will. 2008. “Is China abolishing the hukou system?” The China Quarterly 195, 582–606.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Family Planning Commission of China. 2010. Zhongguo liudong renkou fazhan baogao (Report on China's Migrant Population Development). Beijing: China Population Publishing.Google Scholar
Gu, Shen-wei. 2011. “Shanghai jiazhang zexiao xianxiang jiaju” (Shanghai parents choose school more and more), 25 May, http://article.kdslife.com/content_18567_1.html. Accessed 19 October 2011.Google Scholar
He, Ying. 2007. “Mingong zinü jiaoyu zhi huo” (Puzzle of migrant children education), Chongqing Evening News, 13 September, http://www.cqwb.com.cn/cqwb/html/2007-09/13/content_34227.htm. Accessed 17 October 2012.Google Scholar
Honig, Emily. 1992. Creating Chinese Ethnicity: Subei People in Shanghai, 1850–1980. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Kipnis, Andrew. 2011a. Governing Educational Desire: Culture, Politics, and Schooling in China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kipnis, Andrew. 2001b. “The disturbing educational discipline of ‘peasants’.” The China Journal 46, 1–24.Google Scholar
Lin, Yi. 2011. “Turning rurality into modernity: suzhi education in a suburban public school of migrant children in Xiamen.” The China Quarterly 206, 313–330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ling, Minhua. 2011. “Discipline the new citizens in-between: migrant workers' children and local NGOs in urban China.” Paper presented at the Association of Asian Studies Annual Conference, Honolulu, 31 March–2 April 2011.Google Scholar
Ma, Li. 2010. “Internal migration, institutional change and social inequality in post-Communist Shanghai.” PhD diss., Cornell University.Google Scholar
Murphy, Rachel. 2004. “Turning peasants into modern Chinese citizens: ‘population quality’ discourse, demographic transition and primary education.” The China Quarterly 177, 1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Portes, Alejandro, Fernández-Kelly, Patricia and Haller, William. 2005. “Segmented assimilation on the ground: the new second generation in early adulthood.” Ethnic & Racial Studies 28, 1000–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Portes, Alejandro, and Zhou, Min. 1993. “The new second generation: segmented assimilation and its variants.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 530, 74–96.Google Scholar
Qian, Yan-Feng. 2010. “Shanghai may further relax hukou system,” China Daily, 16 March.Google Scholar
Ren, Xing Hui, and Li, Yang Zi. 2012. “Liudong yu liushou zhijian: nongmingong zinü yiwu jiaoyu wenti” (Between mobile and left-behind: education issues of peasant migrant children), 15 January, http://www.zhuanxing.cn/html/publication/693.html. Accessed 20 August 2012.Google Scholar
Shanghai City Committee. 2009. Diaoyan keti: Shanghai wailai liudong renkou zinü jiaoyu wenti yanjiu (2009 Research Subject: the Education Problems for Children of Migrant Population in Shanghai), 8 June, http://www.shmj.org.cn/node809/node827/node829/userobject1ai1731844.html. Accessed 11 October 2011.Google Scholar
Shanghai Municipal Statistics Bureau. 2011. Shanghai Statistical Yearbook 2001. Beijing: China Statistics Press.Google Scholar
Shanghai Normal University Tao Xing Zhi Research Center. 2013. Shanghai Migrant Workers' Children Education Bluebook, http://www.docin.com/p-722978899.html. Accessed 8 December 2013.Google Scholar
Solinger, Dorothy J. 1999. Contesting Citizenship in Urban China: Peasant Migrants, the State, and the Logic of the Market. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wang, Fei-Ling. 2004. “Reformed migration control and new targeted people: China's hukou system in the 2000s.” The China Quarterly 177, 115–132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wang, Feng. 2008. Boundaries and Categories: Rising Inequality in Post-Socialist Urban China. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Wang, Feng, Zuo, Xuejin and Ruan, Danching. 2002. “Rural migrants in Shanghai: living under the shadow of socialism.” International Migration Review 36(2), 520–545.Google Scholar
Woronov, T.E. 2004. “In the eye of the chicken: hierarchy and marginality among Beijing's migrant schoolchildren.” Ethnography 5, 289–313.Google Scholar
Wu, Jieh-Min. 2010. “Rural migrant workers and China's differential citizenship: a comparative-institutional analysis.” In Whyte, Martin King (ed.), One Country, Two Societies: Rural–Urban Inequality in Contemporary China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 55–81.Google Scholar
Wu, Shan. 2010. “Shanghai yi zhongxue jiang nongmingong zidi yu bendi xuesheng geli” (A Shanghai high school segregates migrant children from local students), Southern Urban News, 9 June.Google Scholar
Xiong, Yihan. 2010. Chengshihu de haizi: nongmingong zinü de shenfen shengchan yu zhengzhi shehuihua (Urbanized Children: Identity Production and Political Socialization of Migrant Children in Contemporary China). Shanghai: People's Publishing House.Google Scholar
Zhang, Li. 2001. Strangers in the City: Reconfigurations of Space, Power, and Social Networks within China's Floating Population. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Zhou, Min. 1997. “Segmented assimilation: issues, controversies, and recent research on the new second generation.” International Migration Review 31, 975–1008.Google Scholar