Hukou System Influencing the Structural, Institutional Inequalities in China: The Multifaceted Disadvantages Rural Hukou Holders Face
Authors
Publication Date
2022Journal Title
SOCIAL SCIENCES-BASEL
ISSN
2076-0760
Publisher
MDPI AG
Volume
11
Issue
5
Language
en
Type
Article
This Version
VoR
Metadata
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Hung, J. (2022). Hukou System Influencing the Structural, Institutional Inequalities in China: The Multifaceted Disadvantages Rural Hukou Holders Face. SOCIAL SCIENCES-BASEL, 11 (5) https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci11050194
Abstract
<jats:p>In this paper, the author investigates rural Chinese citizens’ encounters of structural and institutional inequalities and social (im)mobility. The author addresses social (im)mobility from a holistic perspective (i.e., in institutional, occupational, social, educational, cultural and political dimensions). In this regard, the author explores if a range of parental disadvantages serve as significant hindrances to the acquisition of social mobilising opportunities among the next generations in rural Chinese contexts. Here a holistic presentation helps understand the nuanced relationship between institutional barriers (i.e., rural hukou status) and alternative obstacles to social mobility; and explore, in part, how parental inheritance of rural hukou status would bar individuals’ from socially mobilising and result in some forms of unsustainability. Previous research on China restrictively measures social (im)mobility from limited perspectives, failing to fully and accurately reflect the extent of social (im)mobility Chinese populations face. This paper is a comprehensive literature review where relevant Chinese literature, exclusively found in the e-library system of the University of Cambridge, is included and thoroughly discussed. Articles that include the keywords of “hukou”, “China”, “social mobility” and (a) “economic”, (b) “social”, (c) “cultural”, (d) “linguistic” or (e) “political” are extensively studied, in a hope to understand the existing scholarship on multifaceted social (im)mobility in Chinese contexts. The author argues that, despite the 2014 hukou reform, further loosening the requirements for rural-to-urban hukou conversion should be prioritised by the Central Government of China in order to ensure the rural-urban divide and structural and institutional inequalities rural hukou holders face can curtain.</jats:p>
Keywords
social inequality, social stratification, social mobility, social reproduction, economic capital, social capital, cultural capital, political capital, China, migration, labour migration
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci11050194
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/336658
Rights
Licence:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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