Ebooks for the Classroom+Faculty

Rural Origins, City Lives: Class and Place in Contemporary China
ISBN: 9780295999258
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / University of Washington Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter

A new understanding of rural-urban migration and inequality in contemporary China



Many of the millions of workers streaming in from rural China to jobs at urban factories soon find themselves in new kinds of poverty and oppression. Yet, their individual experiences are far more nuanced than popular narratives might suggest. Rural Origins, City Lives probes long-held assumptions about migrant workers in China. Drawing on fieldwork in Nanjing, Roberta Zavoretti argues that many rural-born urban-dwellers are--contrary to state policy and media portrayals--diverse in their employment, lifestyle, and aspirations. Working and living in the cities, such workers change China's urban landscape, becoming part of an increasingly diversified and stratified society. Zavoretti finds that--more than thirty years after the Open Door Reform--class formation, not residence status, is key to understanding inequality in contemporary China.

Roberta Zavoretti is a lecturer of social and cultural anthropology at the University of Cologne.