The impact of rural migration on village development: A comparative study in three Chinese villages.

摘要

This dissertation investigates the impact of rural-to-urban migration on rural development in China. I conducted case studies in three villages in Hunan Province, taking the villages as my research units. My aim has been to produce systematic, detailed studies at the village level to understand the impact of migration on villages as social organizations, looking at both economic and social change. There are two main axes of comparison in my research design: (1) Space, comparing three villages, and (2) Time, comparing three historical periods, before 1949, during the collective era (1956-1978) and the reform era (1978-present).; Three villages were selected because their experience during the reform era represented three important patterns of migration and rural development. Ya'ai village, located near an urban area, is developing a suburban pattern based on local commuting. Most peasants work in the nearby city and are developing urban-oriented economic activities in the village. Haojiang village, located in a more remote area, is developing a pattern of resource extraction and migration. As local timber resources have been depleted, villagers have come to depend increasingly on migration to work in distant cities. Wucheng village, also located in a more remote area, had been developing a largely self-sufficient pattern that based on small-scale timber extraction combined with subsistence agriculture. However, it became evident that Wucheng was gradually giving way to a long distance migration pattern similar to that of Haojiang.; The optimistic scenario has not been borne out by the experience of the last two decades. While villages near urban centers are being transformed into urbanized "suburbs" in which urban-oriented activities are well developed, in the great majority of Chinese villages, located farther from urban areas, migration has drained human and economic resources from rural areas, subsistence agriculture has been undermined and the community is dying. In both cases, though higher income and standard of living are achieved, migration exacerbates the rich-poor differential among peasants. Peasants have contributed to urban construction, while the infrastructure, community activities and social welfare of villages are greatly overlooked.