WEBINAR: Rethinking Migrant Citizenship Using a Spatial-Temporal-Leisure Framework

Chinese rural–urban migration has been prevalent for over 40 years but these migrants still tend to face difficulties in terms of housing, working, healthcare, education and so forth, indicating the importance of citizenship in understanding their relocation in cities. Despite discussions on how these migrants’ hukou status influences their citizenship, limited insights have been offered regarding migrant use of urban public space, migrant recreation, and how such space can be associated with migrant citizenship.

To fill in such gaps, Visiting Research Fellow Chen Qu proposes that migrant access to such space as a type of social public resource contributes to an important aspect of migrant citizenship and discloses how temporal factors play a key role in migrant use of public space and citizenship in today’s Chinese context, based on fieldwork in a megacity.

Then, she unfolds the underlying reasons for such ‘fights for time’, where migrant financial pressure is hugely considered, involving Chinese rural-urban migrants’ low-level socio-economic status, high living costs in their host city, the significance of and challenges in urban housing ownership. These socioeconomic and institutional dynamics suggest hukou is influencing, particularly in migrant access to urban affordable housing. This research can further help reconsideration of migrant citizenship, the importance of spatial and temporal factors and migrant awareness of participation in active leisure in migrant rights to and lives in cities, and existing housing and hukou policies in China.

Wednesday, 10 May 2023
09.00 - 10.15 (CEST)

Register to attend in-person
Register to attend online

_{Organised by:}
Ine Lietaert, Coordinator of the Migration and Social Policy Cluster
Chen Qu, Visiting Research Fellow