China on the Move: Migration, the State, and the Household

China on the Move: Migration, the State, and the Household, by C. Cindy Fan. London: Routledge, 2008. 210 pp. £75.00 (Hardcover). ISBN 9780415428521.

Domestic population mobility has increased dramatically in China since the early 1980s, when strict control on migration was relaxed. Over 150 million Chinese have left their hometown and the majority of them are rural to urban migrants without permanent hukou at their destination. This migration phenomenon has attracted the attention of many scholars both inside and outside China and there have been numerous publications on it. This authoritative book is written by a distinguished scholar, Cindy Fan at the Geography Department of UCLA, whose research focuses on migration, gender and regional inequality in post-reform China.

This book is outstanding in five respects. First, the book is a comprehensive and detailed analysis of migration in China using census and survey data, interview records and findings from fieldwork dating from 1985 to 2005. Second, the author uses multiple perspectives to interpret migration. Focusing on both the state and the household, both macro and micro approaches are used. The author argues that the hukou paradigm and the permanent migrant paradigm are not adequate. Household and individual-level perspectives are also important in understanding migration in China. For example, the success-failure dichotomy for interpreting return migration is too simplistic. A household perspective is useful for understanding return migration. Third, the author challenges the assumption that peasant migrants' main goal is permanent residence in the city. She argues that peasant migrants adopt a "split-household strategy" and circulation between the city and the countryside is becoming...