About me
Title:
Pliable Citizenship and Migrant Inequality in the Xi Jinping Era
Abstract:
Why has urban public service provision for migrant workers remained uneven and devolved to local governments in China? This is especially puzzling given that this has continued at the same time Xi Jinping has centralized authority in many other policy areas, both domestic and foreign. His administration has ushered in an anti-corruption campaign, Belt and Road Initiative projects, and a greater commitment to improving the quality of life of Chinese citizens. But while he has poured resources in the first two, the last remains left to local governments to formulate and implement policies for outsiders living and working in their cities.
I argue that public service provision for migrants remains patchy and devolved to local government control because inequality serves the state. There has been more continuity than change between administrations in this particular governance issue. Local authorities enact social control through the contingent delivery of social services, and these practices have continued apace under Xi because they work well enough to support other state goals, namely economic development and social stability. It allows the central government to claim commitments to increasing equality while municipal governments can maintain a labor force for whom they do not have to provide the full set of services. However, decentralized benefits are not designed to improve the overall welfare of a group of people defined by their movement and mobility.
Municipal and district authorities use what I call “pliable citizenship.” I introduce this term to explain an outsider’s social rights to the city that are place-, time-, and individual migrant-dependent. That is, a migrant’s ability to access and use services in the city can change based on different factors and the set of policies and practices in the city or district in which they happen to be working and living that year. The moldability of eligibility requirements, obstacles to access, and hoop-jumping give local bureaucrats and frontline service providers some flexibility in choosing to whom they provide healthcare, education, housing, and other entitlements. Pliable citizenship is a component of a larger process of the “political atomization” of Chinese migrants (Chan forthcoming).
