Rural-Urban Migration, Structural Transformation, and Housing Markets in China

Short-term migration, rural workfare programmes, and urban labour markets

Rural and urban labour markets in developing countries are integrated by migration flows, which respond to earnings opportunities at origin and destination. This is the core of the celebrated Harris and Todaro (1970) model, which shows how in equilibrium, migration flows equate expected wages between rural and urban areas. One important implication of this model is that changes in rural employm...

Scenario Analysis on Urbanization and Rural-Urban Migration in China

Performing identities: Women in rural–urban migration in contemporary China

This paper is centred on the process of identity and belonging negotiation of rural women in their migration to urban employment in contemporary China. Employing a unique mobile method, the author follows rural women’s migration by gathering data from both sending and receiving areas, and captures the dynamic and situated, fluid nature of rural migrant women’s identity deconstruction and recons...

Sustainable Urban Housing in China

As China is becoming more urbanized, about 3.5 million units of housing are built every year. It is very important to develop sustainable urban housing in China. A team of researchers and developers from the USA and China have worked together to develop several housing projects in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. These designs are neither “hi-tech” solutions nor “super-advanced” technologies. I...

The Transformation of Urban Vegetable Retail in China: Wet Markets, Supermarkets, and Informal Markets in Shanghai

The state-monopolised system of vegetable retail in socialist urban China has transformed into a market-based system run by profit-driven actors. Publicly owned wet markets not only declined in number after the state relegated its construction to market forces, but were also thoroughly privatised, becoming venues of capital accumulation for the market operators now controlling these properties....