Samantha A. Vortherms, "Manipulating Authoritarian Citizenship: Security, Development, and Local Membership in China" (Stanford UP, 2024)
Nov 30, 2024
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Samantha A. Vortherms, an assistant professor at UC Irvine, explores the manipulative nature of citizenship in authoritarian China. She delves into the hukou system, revealing how it creates inequality and affects access to resources. Vortherms contrasts internal migrants' challenges with undocumented workers in California, showcasing complex dynamics of inclusion and exclusion. The discussion also highlights urban migration policies and the government's attempts to reform hukou while maintaining regional disparities. Her insights challenge simplistic views of victimhood in society.
The Hukou system in China creates a divide between urban and rural residents, impacting access to jobs and social services.
Local governments manipulate Hukou policies to balance economic development and social stability, influencing migrant integration outcomes significantly.
Deep dives
The Hukou System: Historical Context and Social Control
The Hukou system, a household registration framework in China, has historical roots dating back to imperial times and was modernized in the 1950s to manage labor within a planned economy. This system effectively designates individuals as either urban or rural residents, linking their access to jobs, education, and social services to their registered location. Through stringent regulations, it initially restricted internal migration, ensuring that people remained tied to their places of production and consumption. Despite recent reforms, the Hukou system continues to reinforce social control, as it dictates access to essential resources and privileges based on one’s hukou status, creating a divide between urban and rural populations.
Evolving Dynamics in the Post-Mao Era
The evolution of the Hukou system post-Mao reflects the broader transition towards market-oriented reforms and increased internal migration. Although many restrictions still apply, the Hukou system allowed for a degree of labor mobility, especially as cities needed workers for burgeoning industries. This gradual relaxation led to the creation of variations in local regulations, with some cities modifying their policies to attract skilled labor while others remained restrictive. As local governments adapted the Hukou policies to their economic contexts, this produced significant differences in access to urban benefits, complicating the already dualistic structure of urban-rural citizenship.
Local Strategies and Economic Development
Local governments in China have tailored their Hukou policies not just for social order but also as a strategy for economic development, prioritizing specific demographics for migration. The study identifies three primary development strategies: attracting high-skilled labor in cities focused on foreign investments, enhancing agricultural productivity with local populations, and relocating individuals from impoverished rural areas to achieve central government goals. These strategies illustrate how local authorities navigate between the need for economic growth and social stability, sometimes overlooking the previously prioritized high-skilled migrant pathways. Consequently, this manipulation leads to varied integration outcomes, emphasizing the local context's role in shaping policies.
The Role of Individual Choices and Social Connections
Recent research highlights that individual migrants' aspirations and family ties significantly influence their willingness to change their Hukou status. Factors such as age, socio-economic background, and family connections play a crucial role in this decision, complicating the notion of inclusion. Paradoxically, migrants with land rights back home may feel more secure to change their Hukou because of a safety net that offers a fallback option. Despite facing discrimination in urban areas, the desire for upward mobility through Hukou adjustments reflects broader narratives around migration and citizenship, mirroring global dynamics while retaining unique local characteristics.
The redistribution of political and economic rights is inherently unequal in autocratic societies. Autocrats routinely divide their populations into included and excluded groups, creating particularistic citizenship through granting some groups access to rights and redistribution while restricting or denying access to others. This book asks: why would a government with powerful tools of exclusion expand access to socioeconomic citizenship rights? And when autocratic systems expand redistribution, whom do they choose to include?
In Manipulating Authoritarian Citizenship: Security, Development, and Local Membership in China(Stanford UP, 2024), Samantha A. Vortherms examines the crucial case of China—where internal citizenship regimes control who can and cannot become a local citizen through the household registration system (hukou)—and uncovers how autocrats use such institutions to create particularistic membership in citizenship. Vortherms shows how local governments explicitly manipulate local citizenship membership not only to ensure political security and stability, but also, crucially, to advance economic development. Vortherms demonstrates how autocrats use differentiated citizenship to control degrees of access to rights and thus fulfill the authoritarian bargain and balance security and economic incentives. This book expands our understanding of individual-state relations in both autocratic contexts and across a variety of regime types.