jats:titleAbstract</jats:title>jats:pThis article aims to investigate the following question: How does the process of urbanization of rural–urban migrants (jats:italicshiminhua</jats:italic>) unfold in Chinese cities? It focuses on the urbanization of people in the contextualized concept of jats:italicshiminhua</jats:italic>. This paper mainly adopted qualitative methods of focus group discussions (FGDs) and semi‐structured interviews in three cities in the Greater Bay Area of China (GBA). The results indicate that jats:italicshiminhua</jats:italic> is an incremental process of gaining internalized urban identity and negotiated place attachment. It implies that successful jats:italicshiminhua</jats:italic> process in the GBA consists of efforts from multiple levels of stakeholders. Regional policy and urban governance strategy should understand jats:italicshiminhua</jats:italic> more comprehensively to facilitate successful jats:italicshiminhua</jats:italic> process.</jats:p>