Immigration and the Transformation of Chinese Society

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel Proposal Application

Abstract

This panel brings together an international team of scholars who have recently begun working on the EU-China jointly funded project seeking to understand how immigration transforms Chinese society. The innovative panel format will be used to share and discuss the project’s research imperative, methodological innovations, and initial observations and findings. The rapid urbanization in China not only includes hundreds of millions internal migrants, but an increasing number of foreign (including Taiwanese and returning ethnic Chinese) migrants as well. At present, foreign migrants fill relatively small and specific skills and knowledge gaps, but also include marriage migrants, traders, investors, retirees and unskilled workers. However, as China’s population growth levels off, population ageing sets in. China’s working age population is set to decline, slowly at first but increasingly rapidly, especially roughly after 2025. Moreover, the population’s sex imbalance will become ever more pronounced and China will face an increasing shortage of marriageable and working age people. The panel contributions will introduce their projects and offer insights on the interaction between labour markets and population dynamics, the consequences of migration, integration policies in China, EU-China mobility, and shifting patterns of inequality and the cultural division of labour.

Area of Study

• China and Inner Asia

Session Organizer

• Elena Barabantseva, University of Manchester

Chair

• Frank Pieke, Leiden University

Individual Presentations

• Migration, Urbanization and the Labour Market - Feng Wang, Fudan University; Lihua Pang, Pekin University

• Migrant Muslim traders in Yiwu - Biao Xiang, Oxford University

• Chinese Immigration Law and Policy: Perspectives of Lawmakers, Administrators and Immigrants - Bjorn Ahl, Cologne University; Michaela Pelican, Cologne University

• When borders lie within: ethnic marriages and illegality on the Sino-Vietnamese border - Elena Barabantseva, University of Manchester