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Sociology of Migration and Post-Western Theory

 | 
Laurence Roulleau-Berger
, 
Liu Yuzhao

Migration and Governance

The Boundary Between Immigrants and State Governance

Liu Yuzhao
Traduction de ZHOU Rong

Note de l’éditeur

Translated by ZHOU Rong, Master of Literature in Chinese Philosophy, Beijing Language and Culture University, holding the Translator Level II Certificate approved by the China Foreign Languages Publishing & Distribution Administration.

Texte intégral

Reflections on the Field Survey

1I can remember that when I was working on this topic, Professor Laurence Roulleau-Berger came to Shanghai and asked to interview a public institution that specially provides employment services for young immigrants. I searched for a long time but failed to find one, so I contacted Mr Chen, an employment assistant of a community near the new campus of Shanghai University. The Shanghai Labor Bureau has a special team for social work in grassroots communities that is responsible for the employment of community residents. Mr Chen is enthusiastic and hard-working and serves as a small supervisor in that area, responsible for employment services and management in the nearby communities. His chief work at that time was to coordinate community residents who had difficulty in finding jobs, to collect and announce job vacancies of related units at irregular intervals, to record the job-hunting intentions of residents, and to recommend them to relevant positions.

2During the survey, he was responsible for two tasks assigned by the superior government: one was to eradicate “zero-employment families” (Li 2007), and the other was the Youth Internship Plan (Zhou and Dai 2002). The former is a task assigned by the Shanghai municipal government, that is, to eradicate the families that have members matching employment conditions but do not have any employed members, and helping at least one family member to find a job. The object of the Youth Internship Plan was targeted at the youths who had graduated from technical schools or colleges but stayed at home unemployed as a NEET group (Not in Education, Employment or Training). Typically, they did not want to find a job; rather, they stayed up all night surfing the Internet and slept until noon. They could not find a good job, nor did they want to do jobs with conditions lower than their expected standards; thus, they are called “the newly unemployed group” in many studies (Lü 2005; Mi 2008). In this plan, related government departments signed an agreement with some enterprises that provided some internship posts. The government funded the internships’ salary, with the aim of getting these young people out of their home and letting them adapt to working status. The town where Mr Chen lived is a town with the largest floating population in Shanghai, while the community that Mr Chen was in charge of also has a large floating population (Mr Chen had no idea about the specific number of migrants, since he did not care about this question); however, his working object didn’t include these floating populations. More importantly, the community in the charge of Mr Chen has over 5,000 residents with Shanghai household registration, while he was only responsible for recommending jobs for the 700 people who hold Shanghai hukou in that community. Although over 4,000 other residents also held Shanghai hukou, since they are a population that was shifted from downtown Shanghai (Wang, Shen, and Xu 2008), and their residential places are not the same as their registered permanent residence, these residents are not within his service purview.

3In 2017, we went to Lyon for a meeting, and we did field survey with Professor Laurence Roulleau-Berger in places in or around Lyon, such as la Guillotière, la Duchère, and Vénissieux. The organization in la Duchère with which we performed an interview was similar to the organization in which Ms Martin works in the case of this study. We were deeply impressed by the diversity of French immigrant groups, as well as the complicated state relationship behind them. First, as an old colonial country, France has maintained very complicated relations with its former colonies. In the surrounding areas of Lyon, many immigrants came from countries and regions in France’s original colonies in North Africa, such as Algeria. As residents of former colonies, although they are immigrants in France, many of them have citizenship; while some others do not have formal citizenship, they have the right to legally stay and work in France. Even irregular migrants from these countries enjoy formal and informal rights—linked to their social networks in the host society—that are much more important than irregular migrants from other countries and regions of the world. Second, because France belongs to the European Union and Schengen countries, there are also a large number of immigrants from other countries within the EU, as well as immigrants from all over the world who hold visas from other Schengen countries that are in the EU. Regardless of whether these immigrants come from the former colonies of France or from other countries in the European Union, because of the unique national relations between France and these countries, these immigrants began to own their unique identity in France. When the relevant agencies of the French government provide services and management, a relationship model and governance model would be formed, different from that with other immigrant groups.

Immigrants and State Boundaries

4By comparing immigrants in France and the migrant population in China, it can be found that there is a very interesting question in immigrant management: in the face of different categories of “immigrant” groups, where is the boundary of state governance? In Shanghai, for a public organization that provides employment services for community residents, its service object does not include the permanent migrant population from other provinces in China in the same community (nor does it include the “foreign population” from other countries and regions); even the population with Shanghai hukou not in the same community (generally called a population with “separation of registered and actual residences,” Renhu Fenli) is not the object of the local government’s services (Xu 2018). However, in Lyon there is a similar public service organization, one which offers services not only to people coming from other regions of France, but also to immigrants from other EU countries, and to Arab immigrants from North African countries like Algeria. The services for these two groups are not very different. Even the immigrants from non-Schengen countries like China, or those who are not from the former colonies could enjoy their services to some extent. Even for laborers who have entered the country illegally, if they have applied for refugee status they can also enjoy certain public medical services and subsidies and urban transportation cards (Su 2019).

5Three questions are involved here, actually; the first is, does a local government apply different treatment to its residents depending on the different types of residence certificate? In China, residents with local hukou can benefit from the social welfare offered by local government based on their “local citizenship identity” (Yue, Zhuang and Fang 2013; Kang 2015), which is not the case for residents without local hukou. If differentiated treatment is implemented, in what ways does the government implement differentiated treatment? And in what ways does it implement “same-city treatment” to residents from other places? If the same-city treatment is implemented, to what extent and on what basis are they implementing the same-city treatment? In this survey on Shanghai, the public services for employment are not only different between Shanghai residents and the floating population, but they also differ in treatment between residents in the same community and those in other places in Shanghai whose residential places are not the same as their registered permanent residence. In Lyon, are their services completely the same for local residents, like those of Givors, and those from other cities, or even those from outside Lyon? The point is not fully embodied in our interviews; however, I have the impression that in the interview in Vénissieux they mentioned that a lot of services they provided were only for residents in the jurisdiction. For residents outside the jurisdiction, especially those outside the region, there were still differences to some extent. Second, as a government of a modern national country, would the organization provide differentiated treatment to domestic residents and to foreign residents? In China, our service and management over fellow countrymen from Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan are different from those over foreigners, and are also highly different from the “migrant population” from other provinces in China. In the same way, in France, due to its historical colonial countries as well as the European Union, the immigrants from these countries and regions, and immigrants from other countries and regions, may have different obligations and rights. How to comprehend the challenge posed by the relationship between the metropolitan country and the former colonies caused by colonial history to the boundaries of national states, as well as the impact formed by regional alliances like the EU on the boundaries of national countries, might be one of the essential questions in immigrant study. Without doubt, in the specific discussion on the service and management of illegal labors and refugees, there would be a third question, i.e. beyond national states, regarding the security responsibility of a modern government regarding basic “human rights.” Within China, there are huge differences between urban and rural areas and regions. In the same way, in the world, among different countries, there are enormous differences in terms of levels of economic and social development. In terms of currency alone, the minimum social security level in Shanghai is much higher than the average income of the rural population in remote provinces in central and western China. Similarly, in France, the relief for refugees may be much higher than the payment for hard work many immigrants would earn in their home country. In this case, how to determine the level of assistance and protection for illegal workers and refugees based on “basic human rights” in a country and by a government is also a difficulty for public policy-making in the context of globalization.

Who Are “International” Immigrants?

6Conversely, if based on the analysis and discussion of citizenship (Su 2012), the classification of different categories of immigration may also need to be further discussed. In China, according to the statistical caliber of the National Bureau of Statistics, the floating population refers to the people who have left the county, city, or municipal jurisdiction where their household registration is located and have lived outside the jurisdiction for a long time; however, from the perspective of enjoying public services, due to different levels of public service pooling in different types, division based on public services often results in different levels within and outside the jurisdiction. In the context of globalization, the legacy of the original colonial system and the new regional integrational alliances are all challenging the original national state governance system. From the perspective of citizenship and public services, the boundary between international and domestic immigrants may also need to be redefined.

Bibliographie

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Auteur

LIU Yuzhao is a professor in the School of Sociology and Political Science (SSPS) and director of Institute of Economic Sociology & Multinationals (IESM), both at Shanghai University. He received a PhD in sociology from Peking University and is a visiting scholar at Duke University, HKUST, and University of Wyoming. His research involves changes of institutions and organizations in modern China, the relationship between urban and rural societies, floating populations, and immigrants in big cities. His funded research projects explore the organizational and institutional changes in rural industry and collective property rights, the social integration and skill development of floating populations, and the education of floating children in big cities. He is the author of 4 books and more than 20 refereed articles in some prestigious Chinese sociology journals, including the top journals Sociology Studies and the Chinese Journal of Sociology. He is a member of the Chinese Sociology Association, secretary general of the Shanghai Sociology Association, an executive member of the Shanghai Demography Association, and a policy-making consulting committee expert member of the Shanghai Population management office. Selected publications include Organization Changing in Rural Industrialization (2009); with Tian Qing, “Multiple Social Boundaries During Defining Collective Memberships,” Xuehai 2, 2017; with Tian Qing, “How to Put into Effect of the New Institutions? ‘Tongbian’ as the new mechanism of institutions changing,” Sociological Studies 4, 2009; with Wang Ping and Ying Kewei, “Organizational Rupture in Taiwan Enterprises and the Social Integration of Taiwanese Colony in Mainland China,” Social Science in China (inner publication) 3, 2009; “Cost Accounting and Decision-Making in Family Industries,” Chinese Journal of Sociology 2, 2009; with Sheng Zhiming, eds., Social Governance: Innovation Research in Megalopolis (2020).

ZHOU Rong (Traducteur)

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