Qian, Zheng
Supervisors
Impacts of Return Migration on Urbanisation at County Towns Level in Western China- A Case Study of Chongqing Municipality
Supervisors
Since the 1980s, a large number of western rural population migrated to eastern regions for work in China. However, majority of these rural migrants eventually migrated back due to difficulties of settling down in destination cities, such as rigid restrictions of obtaining local urban Hukou. Nevertheless, different from the earlier return migrants, who usually remit income to rebuilt rural residence and back to land again, the return migrants in recent years would rather prefer to settle down in county towns near their rural origins and engage in non-agriculture work.
The research will focus on this phenomenon in Chongqing municipality, where has significant return trend, to investigate the return migrants impacts on urbanisation of county towns, examine the current policy responses by government and identify opportunities for policy interventions in the future in order to transform return migration into a positive driver for county town's urbanisation process in Western China.
Supervisors
Professor Ming Sun and Dr Harry Smith
Contact
Email: zq31@hw.ac.uk