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Research Title
A Continued Predicament: Social Exclusion of Rural Migrant Workers in the Pearl River Delta Region, China
- More about Zhiwei
Academic Background
- 2021-present: MPhil/PhD Human Geography, University College London, London, United Kingdom
- 2020-2021: MSc in Urban Studies, University College London, London, United Kingdom
- 2019-2020: MSc in Human Geography and Urban Studies (Research), London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), London, United Kingdom
- 2015-2019: BSc in Human Geography and Urban-rural Planning, Sun Yat-sen university, Guangzhou, China
Internship
August - September. 2018 and July - August 2019: Urban Research Centre, Hunan Architecture Design Institute Co. Ltd, Hunan, China
- Publications
Conference Presentations
- Huang Z. & Chen J. Research on Social Exclusion of Chinese Rural Migrant Workers from the Perspective of Labour-capital Relations: Based on the Empirical Investigation on Guangzhou, Dongguan, and Shenzhen. (劳资关系视角下中国农民工的社会排斥研究：基于穗莞深三地的实证考察) Presented in China Urban Geography Annual Conference 2023, Wuhan, China, Sep 15-18, 2023
- Huang Z. Research on Social Exclusion of Rural Migrant Workers from the Perspective of Institutional Inertia: Based on the Empirical Investigation on Guangzhou and Dongguan. (制度惯性视角下中国农民工的社会排斥研究：基于穗莞两地的实证考察) Presented in China Human Geography Conference 2023, Lanzhou, China, Jul 29-31, 2023
- Huang Z. Rethinking Heritage-led Strategies in Urban China: Branding, Authenticity, and Commercialisation in Changsha. Presented in the 17th Annual Conference of International Association for China Planning, Tianjin, China, Jun 30-Jul 2, 2023
- Research Interests
My research concentrates on the social exclusion of Chinese rural migrant workers. China’s urban-prioritised and state-led development mode has resulted in a stark urban-rural dichotomy marked by large-scale urban territory expansion. Supporting this has been a speculative cycle of investment in labour-intensive industries prompting a sustained demand for labour. Thus, numerous rural residents, especially peasants, migrate to urban areas every year broadly in search of better economic opportunities. However, as holders of agricultural Hukou, these migrants have mostly been restricted to employment in the construction and manufacturing sectors leading to well-known narratives that rural migrant workers suffer from a lack of sufficient income, basic necessities for daily life and social-political vulnerability. In the workplace, rural migrant workers suffer from more than low remuneration where loss of fundamental labour rights leads to all manner of exploitation from their employers. Simultaneously, the loss of urban citizenship caused by Hukou system results in unequal treatment in social insurance, medical care, housing, and education.
Without understanding the dilemmas of this dual condition of migrant labour/urban (non)citizen, any institutional reforms proposed around labour regulations and the Hukou System will only have a limited impact as demonstrated by existing scholarship. Stating from this dimension, my research interests also cover the field of labour studies, especially centralising on issues about social and spatial (in)justice, (in)equality, and unevenness in the Chinese context.
