Abstract

This study investigates what’s known as the world’s largest human migration from rural to urban areas. It examines both the destinations and the origins of the mobility trajectories of Chinese internal migrant workers which is somewhat neglected by current literature. Based on a multi-sited ethnography of the daily life of migrant workers in arrays of social setting (sheds in construction sites, urban villages, factories, restaurants) in their urban stay as well as the well-known left behind population in a rural village, the thesis explores the social and economic changes that this mass regional mobility brought to both rural and urban China. The implication of this work lies in a comprehensive and thorough examination on the regional rural-urban migration. It contributes to a dynamic assess, which deserves to study further, by providing an analysis on all the agents involved in the context of Chinese rural-urban migration: the left behind population in villages, the migrant workers and the urban citizens in cities.