Contesting Citizenship in Urban China

Post-Mao market reforms in China have led to a massive migration of rural peasants toward the cities. Officially denied residency in the cities, the over 80 million members of this "floating population" provide labor for the economic boom in urban areas but are largely denied government benefits that city residents receive. In an incisive and original study that goes against the grain of much of the current discussion on citizenship, Dorothy J. Solinger challenges the notion that markets necessarily promote rights and legal equality in any direct or linear fashion.

Dorothy J. Solinger is Professor of Politics and Society at the University of California, Irvine. Her most recent books are From Lathes to Looms: China's Industrial Policy in Comparative Perspective, 1979-1984 (1991) and China's Transition from Socialism: Statist Legacies and Market Reforms (1993).

List of Illustrations
List of Tables
Preface
Acknowledgments
1 Introduction: Citizenship, Markets, and the State
Appendix: What Is the Floating Population?
PART ONE: STRUCTURE
2 State Policies I: Turning Peasants into Subjects 
3 Urban Bureaucracies I: Migrants and Institutional Change 
4 The Urban Rationing Regime I: Prejudice and Public Goods 
PART TWO: AGENCY
5 State Policies II: The Floating Population Leaves Its Rural Origins 
6 Urban Bureaucracies II: Peasants Enter Urban Labor Markets 
7 The Urban Rationing Regime II: Coping Outside
It and Alternate Citizenship 
Conclusion: Floating to Where? Citizenship and the Logic of the Market in a Time of Systemic Transition
Notes
Bibliography
Index