The largest migration in history is taking place in China today, off the radar of the world's major media. Since the 1990s at least 120 million Chinese peasants have left the countryside for the big cities to work in factories, on construction sites, in catering and prostitution - typically without the most basic rights or protections. Here van Luyn relates the remarkable tales of migrant workers who have helped fuel the explosive growth of the People's Republic of China.

With rapid commercialization, a booming urban economy, and the relaxation of state migratory policies, over 100 million peasants, known as China's "floating population," have streamed into large cities seeking employment and a better life. This book traces the profound transformation this massive flow of rural migrants has caused as it challenges Chinese socialist modes of state control.

The City: The Basics provides a brief yet compelling overview of the study of cities and city life. The book draws on a range of perspectives - economic, political, cultural, and environmental aspects are all considered - to provide a broad comparison of the evolution of cities in the rich Global North and the poorer Global South. Topics covered in the book include: a brief history of cities from ancient times to the post-modern present the differences between "global cities" in the North and "megacities" in the South the environmental impact of urban life and the idea of sustainable cities urban planning, urban politics and urban poverty. Featuring suggestions for further reading, recommended websites and a number of maps and illustrations, this is the ideal starting point for those interested in any aspect of cities or urban studies.

This book discusses more general consideration of marginalized urban spaces and peoples around the globe. It considers the question: Is the formation and later dissolution of the Jewish ghetto an appropriate model for understanding the experience of other ethnic or racial populations?

Peasants and the Art of Farming: A Chayanovian Manifesto focuses on the structure and dynamics of peasant farms and the historically highly variable relations that govern the processes of labour and production within peasant farms. Jan Douwe van der Ploeg argues that peasant agriculture can play an important, if not central, role in augmenting food production and creating sustainability. However, peasants today, as in the past, are materially neglected. By building on the pioneering work of Chayanov, this book seeks to address this neglect and to show how important peasants are in the ongoing struggles for food, food sustainability and food sovereignty. Full Text - Short description/annotation (Text)

During the French colonial period (1900-1945), Vietnamese peasants wrote vigorously about the effects of French policies on their living conditions. The vast majority of their writings were censored or contradicted by the published works of French and Vietnamese officials, and none is currenty in print. Ngo Vinh Long presents a realistic portrait of the Vietnamese determination and resiliency that brought down both the French and the American regimes. He describes the effects of French land policy on the peasants and the resulting problems in tenant farming and sharecropping, as well as peasant reaction to taxes, tax collections, usury, government agarian credit programs, commerce, and industry. He also translates previously unavailable texts that detail the emotions of the Vietnamese people with regard to the French occupation. For the Morningside Edition, Dr. Long has written a new preface in which he describes new scholarship and changes during the last fifteen years.

This book discusses the historical transformation of the destiny of Chinese peasants under the contemporary political economic conditions, and tries to explore the institutional mechanism behind the formation and maintenance of these conditions. The analysis focuses on the consequences of the great social mobilization brought about by the reform. The phenomenon of migrant workers is the most significant consequence of the change of Chinese peasants’ life courses. The destiny of migrant workers will be the destiny of Chinese peasants. The introduction chapter of this book discusses the historical context and peasants’ fates, their political participation, and citizenship of peasants after they become urban dwellers. Chapter one discusses the social implication and economic consequences of the urbanization of rural population. Chapter two discusses the living conditions for peasants that moved to work in cities, including working environments, living environments, education of their children, and their social networking. Chapter three discusses the challenges that the mobilization of peasants has posed on government policy making and urban managements. Chapter four discusses the latest development in the social mobilization of Chinese peasants.

Mass Migration in the World-System brings to light the multiple experiences of migrants across different zones of the world economy. By engaging wide-ranging ideas and theoretical viewpoints of the migration process, the labor market for immigrants, and the rights of migrants, this book provides an important-and much needed-interdisciplinary perspective on the issues of mass migration.

The Cinema of the Precariat is the first book to lay out the incredible range of the precariat (the social class suffering from precarity) as well as a detailed report on the cinematic record of their work and lives.It discusses a thorough and definitive selection of more than 250 films and related visual media that take the measure of the precariat worldwide. For example, thousands of Haitians, including children, harvest sugar cane in the Dominican Republic (The Price of Sugar), while illegal Afghan refugees work in Iran (Delbaran). More familiar are the millions of Latino immigrants, legal or not, of all ages, that work in the United States (Food Chains). Each chapter focuses on a sub-class of the precariat or a contested zone of labor or the evolving political manifestation of the struggles of the unorganized and the dispossessed. Among the hundreds of bewildering film choices available nowadays this book offers the reader reliable guidance to the films bringing to life the economic, political, and social dilemmas faced by millions of the world's global workforce and their families.

Post-Mao market reforms in China have led to a massive migration of rural peasants toward the cities. Denied urban residency, this "floating population" provides labour but loses out on government benefits. This study challenges the notion that markets promote rights and legal equality.