Phantom Services: Deflecting Migrant Workers in China

Speaker: Kevin O’Brien (UC Berkeley)

As China urbanizes, more migrants need and expect public services. Many municipalities, however, deflect demands for benefits instead of meeting them or denying them outright. Within cities, the authorities may establish nearly impossible eligibility requirements or require paperwork that outsiders struggle to obtain. Municipal leaders may also nudge migrants to seek healthcare or education elsewhere by enforcing dormant rules, shutting a service down, or encouraging them to pursue cheaper options in another city or in the countryside. Urban officials deflect migrants for both political and practical reasons. Limiting access isolates and disempowers migrants and is cheaper than offering benefits. Phantom services are also politically appealing at a time when the central government is calling for greater benefits for non-locals and urging people to move to small cities, but municipal authorities must deal with migrants who continue to appear in large numbers in the biggest, most desirable cities.

Bio: Kevin O’Brien is the Bedford Professor of Professor of Political Science and Director of the Institute of East Asian Studies at UC-Berkeley. A student of contemporary Chinese politics, he has written on legislative politics, local elections, fieldwork strategies, popular protest, policy implementation, protest policing, and political reform. His most recent work centers on the Chinese state and theories of popular contention, particularly as concerns protest control and types of repression that are neither “soft” nor “hard.”

All are welcome!
This event is presented by the Nathanson Centre and the York Centre for Asian Research.