A Neighbourhood Perspective to Migrant Integration in Peri-Urban China

Major cities in China have witnessed unprecedented expansion towards outer suburban areas through various forms of mixed-use, clustered development. The peripheries of Chinese cities often comprise diverse residential communities, such as urban villages, workers' dormitories, privatised work-unit compounds, and new commodity housing estates, where local residents and migrants from different backgrounds coexist in a transition period. Chinese migrants now have more housing choices within such areas, but residence in specific neighbourhoods can affect social status, thereby impacting migrants' pathways to integration into the city. This book offers a detailed examination of migrants' integration processes through these peri-urban neighbourhoods. Drawing on a rich and fine-grained examination of migratory individuals, their families, and their trajectories in four types of peri-urban neighbourhoods, the book provides a new perspective on internal migration within China. It illuminates shiminhua, the fluid integration policy for converting migrants into residents in urban China, conceptualises urban migrant integration, and investigates socio-spatial restructuring among the migrant population of China's metropolises. This book offers an understanding of migrant integration into labour-receiving cities through the lens of neighbourhoods in peri-urban Beijing, an emblematic case that illustrates core patterns of internal migration, politics, and socio-spatial changes in contemporary China.