Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers

Economics and Information Theory

Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Aihwa Ong. Durham, NIC: Duke University Press, 1999. ix. 322 pp., notes, bibliography, index.

Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality

Migration, both within and beyond borders, has become an increasingly prominent theme in domestic and international debates, and is the topic of the 2009 Human Development Report (HDR09). The starting point is that the global distribution of capabilities is extraordinarily unequal, and that this is a major driver for movement of people. Migration can expand their choices — in terms of incomes, accessing services and participation, for example — but the opportunities open to people vary from those who are best endowed to those with limited skills and assets. These underlying inequalities, which can be compounded by policy distortions, is a theme of the report.The report investigates migration in the context of demographic changes and trends in both growth and inequality. It also presents more detailed and nuanced individual, family and village experiences, and explores less visible movements typically pursued by disadvantaged groups such as short term and seasonal migration.There is a range of evidence about the positive impacts of migration on human development, through such avenues as increased household incomes and improved access to education and health services. There is further evidence that migration can empower traditionally disadvantaged groups, in particular women. At the same time, risks to human development are also present where migration is a reaction to threats and denial of choice, and where regular opportunities for movement are constrained.National and local policies play a critical role in enabling better human development outcomes for both those who choose to move in order to improve their circumstances, and those forced to relocate due to conflict, environmental degradation, or other reasons. Host country restrictions can raise both the costs and the risks of migration. Similarly, negative outcomes can arise at the country levels where basic civic rights, like voting, schooling and health care are denied to those who have moved across provincial lines to work and live. HDR09 shows how a human development approach can be a means to redress some of the underlying issues that erode the potential benefits of mobility and/or force migration.

Human Development Report 2009. Overcoming Barriers: Human Mobility and Development

REY S. J. and MONTOURI B. D. (1999) US regional income convergence: a spatial econometric perspective, Reg. Studies 33 , 143-156. This study reconsiders the question of US regional economic income convergence from a spatial econometric perspective. Recently developed methods of exploratory spatial data analysis provide new insights on the geographical dynamics of US regional income growth patterns over the 1929-94 period. Strong patterns of both global and local spatial autocorrelation are found throughout the study period, and the magnitude of global spatial autocorrelation is also found to exhibit strong temporal co-movement with regional income dispersion. A spatial econometric analysis of the familiar Baumol specification reveals strong evidence of misspecification due to ignored spatial error dependence. Because of this dependence, shocks originating in one state can spillover into surrounding states, potentially complicating the transitional dynamics of the convergence process. REY S. J. et MONTOURI...

/pdf/us-regional-income-convergence-a-spatial-econometric-58m9i2re8h.pdf

US Regional Income Convergence: A Spatial Econometric Perspective

Established migration theories are mostly based on capitalist market economies and downplay the role of institutions in internal migration and labor market processes. In socialist and transitional economies such as those in Russia and China, however, investigations of migration and the labor market must begin by examining the nature and consequences of state institutions. In this article, I argue that the migration and labor market processes in Chinese cities are deeply influenced by an institution-based opportunity structure. The household registration (hukou) system, in particular, is interwoven with distribution of services and job opportunities. Most peasants who enter cities in response to increased demands for cheap labor are not granted urban citizenship and are treated as “outsiders” to the urban society. The experiences of these “temporary migrants” contrast with those of “permanent migrants” who are state-sponsored or have access to institutional resources. Using qualitative accounts from a 1995...

The Elite, the Natives, and the Outsiders: Migration and Labor Market Segmentation in Urban China

China on the Move offers a new and more thorough explanation of migration, which integrates knowledge from geography, population studies, sociology and politics; to help us understand the processes of social, political, and economic change associated with powerful migration streams so essential to Chinese development.
Using a large body of research, clear and attractive illustrations (maps, tables, and charts) of findings based on census, survey and field data, and selected qualitative material such as migrants’ narratives, this book provides an updated, systematic, empirically rich, multifaceted and lively analysis of migration in China.

China on the Move: Migration, the State, and the Household

In this article, we explore the issue of industrial agglomeration and its relationship to economic development and growth in the less-developed countries of East Asia. We present theoretical arguments and secondary empirical evidence as to why we should have strong expectations about finding a positive relationship between agglomeration and economic performance. We also review evidence from the literature on the roles of formal and informal institutions in East Asian regional economic systems. We then focus specifically on the case of China. We argue that regional development in China has much in common with regional development in other East Asian economies, although there are also important contrasts because of China's history of socialism and its recent trend toward economic liber- alization. Through a variety of statistical investigations, we substantiate (in part) the expected positive relationship between agglomeration and economic perfor- mance in China. We show that many kinds of manufacturing sectors are character- ized by a strong positive relationship between spatial agglomeration and produc- tivity. This phenomenon is especially marked in sectors and regions where liberalization has proceeded rapidly. We consider the relevance of our comments about industrial clustering and economic performance for policy formulation in China and the less-developed countries of East Asia.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/30032934.pdf

Industrial Agglomeration and Development: A Survey of Spatial Economic Issues in East Asia and a Statistical Analysis of Chinese Regions

This paper investigates the driving forces that have brought about recent changes in China's regional development. I review the dramatic shifts in development philosophy during the post-Mao period, and discuss the role of Western neoclassical theories in influencing state regional policy and their relevance in predicting patterns of regional development in China. In contrast to the Maoist period, Chinese development philosophy since the late 1970s has emphasized efficiency rather than equity, and open-door rather than self-reliance. The regional policy that ensued has favored the eastern region and selected coastal provinces and cities. Despite this spatially biased regional policy, the literature has observed a decline in regional inequality in China. The empirical analysis in this paper resolves this paradox by investigating changes in uneven development at multiple scales of resolution. Specifically, inter-provincial inequality declined because a new growth corridor emerged along the southern ...

Of Belts and Ladders: State Policy and Uneven Regional Development in Post-Mao China

Over the last two decades, social and economic changes in transitional economies have produced many new outcomes. In this article, I examine some of the ways in which China's transition has produced gendered outcomes and highlight evidence of these outcomes. I argue that during transition the state has shifted its goals to economic ones, but unlike capitalist economies it still has at its disposal instruments of social control. Peasants are made more vulnerable and must rely on migrant work for survival, but their low institutional status relegates them to outsider status in urban areas. These circumstances, together with socio-cultural traditions that constrain women's mobility and endorse stratifications, have enabled the development of a labor regime that fosters segmentation and division of labor. Peasant migrants' reliance on social network further reinforces segregation in the urban labor market. Using multiple sources of macro-level and field surveys, I examine both quantitative and qualitative evidence of gender segregation and division of labor. The findings show that a high degree of gender segregation among rural-urban migrants exists in the urban labor market, that peasant women's urban work opportunities are short-lived, and that upon marriage women migrants are relegated back to the village and to the ‘inside’, in part to sustain gender division of labor as a household strategy.



Au cours des deux dernieres decennies, les gouvernements de transition ont connu des evolutions economiques et sociales aux consequences nouvelles et variees. Cet article examine comment la transition chinoise a produit des effets differencies selon le sexe, et en detaille la realite. Durant la phase transitoire, l'E tat a transpose ses objectifs sur le terrain economique mais, contrairement aux pays capitalistes, il dispose encore d'instruments de regulation sociale. Rendue plus vulnerable, la population rurale doit compter sur les travailleurs migrants pour sa survie; cependant, une fois en ville, leur faible statut institutionnel en fait des travailleurs ‘en marge’. Alliee aux traditions socio-culturelles qui limitent la mobilite des femmes et nourrissent les stratifications, cette situation a permis la creation d'un systeme d'emploi tendant a la segmentation et la division du travail. La dependance des migrants ruraux par rapport au reseau social vient renforcer la segregation sur le marche du travail urbain. A partir d'etudes de terrain et de niveau global, l'article explore les elements quantitatifs et qualitatifs de segregation sexuelle et division du travail. D'apres les resultats, il existe un degre important de segregation selon le sexe parmi les migrants sur le marche de l'emploi urbain, les possibilites de travail en ville sont de courte duree pour les paysannes et, quant au mariage, les migrantes sont ramenees a leur village et a‘l'interieur’, en partie pour soutenir une strategie domestique de division sexuee du travail.

C. Cindy Fan

Papers

The Elite, the Natives, and the Outsiders: Migration and Labor Market Segmentation in Urban China

China on the Move: Migration, the State, and the Household

Industrial Agglomeration and Development: A Survey of Spatial Economic Issues in East Asia and a Statistical Analysis of Chinese Regions

Of Belts and Ladders: State Policy and Uneven Regional Development in Post-Mao China

Rural-urban migration and gender division of labor in transitional China