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A Room of One's Own: Highly Educated Migrants' Strategies for Creating a Home in Guangzhou
Author(s) -
Suda Kimiko
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
population, space and place
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.398
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1544-8452
pISSN - 1544-8444
DOI - 10.1002/psp.1898
Subject(s) - china , constitution , sociology , space (punctuation) , immigration , face (sociological concept) , qualitative research , urban space , gender studies , geography , economic growth , socioeconomics , political science , regional science , social science , linguistics , philosophy , archaeology , law , economics
Highly educated rural‐to‐urban migrants living within China's first‐tier cities – known as ‘ants’ ( yizu ) – employ a number of different everyday strategies for creating a home in the face of structural obstacles. This article discusses such strategies in the city of Guangzhou by extending Martina Löw's (2001) concept of the constitution of urban space. Different types of migrants' strategies and the transient nature of these migrants' homes are presented against the background of current Chinese debates on social stratification, social mobility, and access to urban space. The analysis is based on 30 qualitative interviews with college graduates living in urban villages ( chengzhongcun ), in addition to the results of field research. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.