Informal Housing and Housing Mobility in Chinese Cities

China is in the midst of an urban revolution, with more than 200 million migrants in Chinese cities every year. While many migrants have lived in cities for years and even decades, they continue to be treated as being... [ view full abstract ]

China is in the midst of an urban revolution, with more than 200 million migrants in Chinese cities every year. While many migrants have lived in cities for years and even decades, they continue to be treated as being “temporary” and “illegal” in cities due to the discriminatory Household Registration System, which excludes them from accessing social welfare benefits such as subsidized housing.  Together with the lack of affordable housing in the formal private sector, migrants often have to live in informal housing such as boxy rooms built by suburban villagers in so-called “urban villages” and tiny dorms in storage basement and bomb shelters.  While existing studies have widely documented migrants’ poor housing conditions in the informal sector, we know little about how informal housing affect migrants’ housing mobility over time.  Utilizing in-depth interviews of migrants in Beijing, this paper aims to assess migrants’ housing mobility through their housing career in cities.  Constrained by both institutional exclusion and high housing prices, migrants have experienced high residential mobility due to job insecurity and the government’s demolition of informal housing, but they have experienced little upward mobility in housing conditions and neighborhood quality.  In contrast, there is even a downward mobility spatially as migrants have to live further and further away from preferred city centers.  Being trapped in informal housing, migrants in Chinese cities see little hope for housing mobility.  This imposes serious challenges to inclusive housing policy and inclusive urban development being promoted by the government.