Local Citizenship: Welfare Reform Urban/Rural Status, and Exclusion in China

Abstract

After 1949 China's welfare system developed on the basis of a status division between urban and rural residents. Urban and rural societies were profoundly influenced by the respective organization of their welfare systems, which shared the feature of being fixed to specific places (rural) or enterprises (urban). Reform of core institutions is constrained by path dependency. Knowledge of those constraints, however, can aid efforts to shape new paths. In this paper we examine how institutional legacies of urban – rural status differentiation continue to structure economic and welfare reform. China's reform process has been characterized by an unusual degree of decentralization and local experimentation. As a result, the nature of change is not easily seen by examining only laws and policies related to welfare. Instead, broader changes in the economy and the loosening of controls on mobility have interacted with the locality/enterprise welfare systems to generate diverse local outcomes. After an overview of the welfare institutions and the reform process, we draw on field research in industrializing rural areas in Guangdong to describe a pattern we label ‘local citizenship’ where welfare benefits are elaborated for the locally born while excluding migrants.

Unequal cities of spectacle and mega-events in China

“…During the same period, Shanghai's income inequalities also rose from 2.92 to 4.17, and Beijing, from 3.09 to 3.92 (Shanghai Municipal Statistics Bureau, 2001Beijing Municipal Statistics Bureau, 2001. government services in particular had been increasingly shaped around local citizenship, barring migrants as outsiders from accessing them (Smart and Smart, 2001). The restructuring of welfare reforms centred on the strengthening of local citizenship tends to be promoted actively by those local governments in more affluent eastern provinces.…”

Why Do Migrant Workers Not Participate in Urban Social Security Schemes? The Case of the Construction and Service Sectors in Tianjin

“…The collectively organised rural healthcare system collapsed with economic reforms (Bogg, et al, 1996;Liu, 2004). The state funded welfare centres for elderly people who did not have close relatives to take care of them were also closed (Davis, 1989;Hussain, 1994;Smart and Smart, 2001). Some later attempts to re-establish social welfare in these areas were not very successful, particularly in poor rural areas.…”

Community-based approaches to social exclusion among rural-to-urban migrants in China

“…The Chinese household registration hukou system was established in the early 1950s in order to attain more uniform population distribution by enforcing restrictions on labour mobility through the assignment of an 'agricultural' or 'non-agricultural' status to Chinese households and individuals. Hukou status continues to be a primary determinant of the nature and extent of social welfare benefits, as well as employment opportunities, for Chinese citizens (Smart and Smart 2001;Wong, Li, and Song 2007;Ngok 2012). In the 1980s and 1990s, rural-tourban migrants were not permitted to transfer their hukou, and thus could not receive the social welfare provisions accorded to urban residents, including pensions, healthcare, social services and unemployment insurance (Li and Chui 2011;Xu, Guan, and Yao 2011).…”