Chapter 14: The globalization-migration nexus across China’s internal and international human movements

Overview & Synopsis

Human movements within and across China’s borders are increasingly diverse, complex, and interlinked, in strong entanglements with changing globalization and urbanization processes. This chapter aims to map and highlight the role of economic globalization in shaping the interlocking dynamics of China’s internal and international migration and to assess how the globalization-migration relationship is similarly or differently examined in these two dichotomized research groups. Highlighting a historical perspective, our literature review shows internal and international migrants are linked in multiple underexplored ways through social networks, infrastructures, and use of working and living spaces. While both research groups used to echoing a push-pull and development-migration nexus approach, they are turning towards more experience-focused and qualitative assessment of the migration process. Innovative approaches that go beyond rural-urban and internal-international binaries are in urgent need to explore more diverse and interwoven forms of migration taking place in rapidly shifting social, economic, and political contexts.