Policing and racialization of rural migrant workers in Chinese cities

Abstract

This article examines policing practices that produce forms of race-like status for rural migrants in Chinese cities. I analyse new forms of ‘natural attributes’-based discrimination and regulation of the rural-urban divide based on hukou, the body of laws that control household registration and movement of workers within China's developing urban industrial order. I argue that rural migrant workers are policed in cities through a process by which new disadvantageous racializing identifications take shape, reinforcing stereotypes of rural migrants' bodily features. This research applies critical race theory to issues generally analysed through the lens of class. Contextualized within China's market-oriented reform, economic growth and social transformations, this approach to racialization endeavours to understand the intricate cultural and material aspects of rural-urban migration in China.

Keywords:

• China
• hukou
• migrant worker
• policing
• racism
• racialization

Acknowledgements

The author wants to thank Paul E. Amar. This paper would not have been possible without his warm support and help. In addition, the author thanks the anonymous reviewers as well as researchers with whom he communicated in relation to this piece. It repeatedly reminds the author that writing is not a private and proprietary process but a social and public one.

Notes

1. In a most recent case, the Chinese media covered a scandal in which a number of high school students in Chongqing forged minority ethic identities in order to receive priority in university/college admission (He 2009).

2. The procuratorate, or jianchayuan, is a judicial organ in China's legal system. It acts as the prosecutor on behalf of the state in criminal cases.

3. According to research on rural migrants to Shenzhen, it cost two months' salary to pay for various certificates and permits before a migrant worker could ‘legitimately’ start to look for a job (Alexander and Chan 2004). Indeed, not many rural migrant workers are willing to, or can afford to, obtain a temporary residence permit. In 2003, less than half of the migrant workers in China had the permit (Pils n.d.). In the aftermath of Sun Zhigang, many local governments reduced the fees they charged for the permit.

4. Newspaper stories on the case of Sun Zhigang abound, and most of them are reprinted on the internet. Information in this paper was collected through documentary and online research in March 2006 and November 2008. Most details are from two stories published in Nanfang Metro News (Nanfang Dushi Bao) and Beijing Youth (Beijing Qingnian Bao), at http://news.sina.com.cn/s/2003-04-25/09501015845.shtml and http://news.xinhuanet.com/newscenter/2003-04/28/content_851808.htm (accessed March 2006).

5. See also the story on Southern Weekend, 19 June 2003, by precisely the journalist who first reported on the case of Sun Zhigang. Available at http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2003-06-19/01551186977.shtml.

6. The tendency to ‘squat’, in the biased urban account, is a signature bodily feature for rural migrants. In this case, apparently Sun's brother knew that Sun would resist it, and that it could be of great importance in Sun's circumstances.

7. I thank Yan Yuan at the University of Westminster, UK, for this point.