The Urbanization of People : The Politics of Development, Labor Markets, and Schooling in the Chinese City

Eli Friedman reveals how cities in China have granted public goods to the privileged while condemning poor and working-class migrants to insecurity, constant mobility, and degraded educational opportunities. He provides a fine-grained account of the life experiences of people drawn into the cities as workers but excluded as full citizens. "During the summer of 2011, the Beijing municipal government launched population control measures to clear the children of migrant workers from the city. Just weeks before the beginning of the school year, bulldozers demolished more than two dozen schools serving families who had migrated to the capital from China's vast rural hinterland. It therefore came as something of a surprise when soon thereafter the central government began calling for "the urbanization of people," by which they meant allowing tens of millions of rural migrants to get official residency and access to social services in the cities where they were employed. Over the course of the 2010s, it became increasingly clear that the central government envisioned a citizenship regime in which an individual's position within the national socio-spatial hierarchy would correspond as closely as possible to their levels of human capital-high-end cities for the high-end population, low-end places for the low-end population. Using the school as a lens on the urbanization process, Eli Friedman investigate how city governments in China are managing flows of people into the city, which groups of people are included in which types of cities and why, and what the socio-economic consequences of this approach are. Drawing on more than 200 in-depth interviews with migrant parents and teachers, a careful analysis of policy documents, and direct observation in the classroom, Friedman argues that urban governments in China are providing access to public education precisely to those that need it least: school admissions heavily favor families with already high levels of economic, cultural, and social capital, a phenomenon he refers to as the "inverted welfare state." The Urbanization of People shows how this inverted welfare state functions in practice and how it changes understandings of the process of urbanization in China"-- Provided by publisher Amid a vast influx of rural migrants into urban areas, China has allowed cities wide latitude in providing education and other social services. While millions of people have been welcomed into the megacities as a source of cheap labor, local governments have used various tools to limit their access to full citizenship. The Urbanization of People reveals how cities in China have granted public goods to the privileged while condemning poor and working-class migrants to insecurity, constant mobility, and degraded educational opportunities. Using the school as a lens on urban life, Eli Friedman investigates how the state manages flows of people into the city. He demonstrates that urban governments are providing quality public education to those who need it least: school admissions for nonlocals heavily favor families with high levels of economic and cultural capital. Those deemed not useful are left to enroll their children in precarious resource-starved private schools that sometimes are subjected to forced demolition. Over time, these populations are shunted away to smaller locales with inferior public services. Based on extensive ethnographic research and hundreds of in-depth interviews, this interdisciplinary book details the policy framework that produces unequal outcomes as well as providing a fine-grained account of the life experiences of people drawn into the cities as workers but excluded as full citizens.