Join us for a panel discussion on the state of the research field on internal migration in China.
8th February 10.00-12.00 followed by a buffet lunch.
Dr. Jamie Coates (Department of East Asian Studies) will moderate the panel discussion amongst three scholars of internal migration in China:
Dr. Yu Chen, Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies, University of Sheffield
Rachel Murphy, Professor of Chinese Development and Society, University of Oxford
Dr. Zheng Wang, Lecturer in Sustainable Cities, King’s College London
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Dr Chen’s research areas are in China’s urbanisation and rural-to-urban migration, urban development, labour market and housing. China is experiencing the largest migration wave in human history, with hundreds of millions of people moving from the countryside to cities to seek better lives. She is working on the social, economic, spatial and environmental consequences of such massive urbanisation. She has published high-quality articles in international peer-reviewed journals, such as Urban Studies, Cities, Housing Studies, Land Use Policy, Habitat International, Environment and Planning B, Professional Geographer, and Population, Space and Place. In addition to journal articles, she co-edited a book entitled ‘Urban Inequality and Segregation in Europe and China’ in 2021. Her research has been funded by the ESRC, the Worldwide Universities Networks (WUN), and the Universities China Committee in London (UCCL).
Professor Murphy's research explores the everyday use of technologies in migrant families in mainland China. Her most recent monograph, The Children of China’s Great Migration (Cambridge University Press, 2020; paperback edition 2022), supported by a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship, drew on longitudinal fieldwork with children, their caregivers and migrant parents who hailed from two landlocked provinces in eastern China. Reviews of this book appear in The China Journal, The China Quarterly, Journal of Ethnic and Racial Studies, Journal of Agrarian Change and The Developing Economies. Her first monograph, How Migrant Labor is Changing Rural China (Cambridge University Press, 2002) examined return migrant business creation in China’s rural hinterlands.
Dr Zheng Wang is a Lecturer in Sustainable Cities in the Department of Geography at Kings College London. Zheng’s current work is focused on identifying and explaining the variegated processes underpinning the development of mega urban projects, and the social outcomes and possibilities that arise as a result. He is particularly interested in how different urban governance configurations and planning approaches can produce variegated and potentially positive social outcomes and processes. His work takes urban China as a critical site to develop theoretical insights for a more global urban studies. Zheng’s research has been funded by the British Academy and Economic and Social Research Council focusing on the long-term social legacy of large-scale urban developments, life and livelihood after resettlement and community rebuilding.
