LU Yao (Columbia University)

Massive rural-urban migration and growing collective resistance are two profound transformations in China. How are these two phenomena connected? Also, rural and urban protests in China have been portrayed as fragmented phenomena. With greater geographic mobility, have the urban-rural linkages been restored to a certain extent? Drawing on several data sources, I study the effects of migration on collective action in rural China. I find that migration constitutes a politically transformative experience for many migrants. In turn, migrants act as a vehicle of political diffusion for their sending communities. The role of migration can be understood in the context of distinct institutional arrangements in China, which were originally engineered to disenfranchise rural-origin people but which instead have inadvertently politicized migrants and peasants alike.