The globalization of the Chinese labor market strengthens, rather than reduces, the cultural division of labor in the recipient countries. Exposing various local reasons for illegal emigration is not in the interest of the Chinese state, which is more satisfied with media reports of its crackdown on human trafficking. In the 1980s and 1990s, economic liberalization and opening up to the outside world made Taiwan's containment strategy a thing of the past.
However, as in the Mao era, the economic development of a region in the province was realized through the uneven haze. Local wealth is built primarily by donations from ethnic Chinese from Southeast Asia: 80 percent of the township's population. Immediately after the beginning of the reforms in 1978, the emigration of Fuqing to Southeast Asia began (Shi Xueqin.
Since the early 1950s, the authorities in town A have solicited donations from former residents of the town who have moved to Singapore and. The construction of a theater stage in front of the temple in village A illustrates this particularly well. Local official statistics for migration in the early twentieth century and after 1979 provided by the township branch of the Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese on 1 June 2000;.
VILLAGE B: ENGINEERING MIGRATION
The rest of the women stay in the village with their young children and in-laws or work as Village B, the field studied, reflects the general conditions of economic decline in Mingxi. The village is located in a forested area in the hilly and mountainous eastern part of Mingxi.
Since the early 1990s, the solution to these economic problems for many urban dwellers and farmers alike has been migration to Europe.
DISCOVERING MOBILITY: INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION FROM VILLAGE B
DISCOVERING MOBILITY: INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION FROM VILLAGE B . pollution) are all factors that contribute to similar displacement of the rural population. International rather than internal migration from this village only began in the early 1990s, when a network of. On the contrary, the rich resources and industry of Mingxi County had caused the immigration of merchants from neighboring Jiangxi in the early twentieth century, the immigration of political refugees in the early 1930s from Guangdong Province and the provincial capital of Fujian, and after 1949 cadres , students, workers and even farmers from other places.
These migrants were part of and used contacts with a much larger flow of urban migrants to Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Such migration chains direct migrants from very specific places of origin to very specific destinations and employment in a highly segregated ethnic enclave of the local economy (on ethnic enclaves see Portes and Bach, 1985; Portes, Guarnizo and Landolt, 1999; Portes and Jensen, 1987; Zhou, 1992; Zhou and Logan, 1989). The experience of village B is very illustrative in this respect due to the recentness and speed of the establishment of the migration chain to Europe.
These connections told X about the riches of the Zhejiang people in Europe and the opportunities that awaited enterprising individuals, especially in Italy. By the summer of 2000, local authorities estimated that 257 people had left the village and between 900 and 1,100 people had left the township (equivalent to .. 12% of the entire population) to overseas destinations (interview Mingxixian Difang zhi Bianzuan Weiyuanhui with the President of the Mingxi County Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, June Our survey in village B, conducted in 2000, confirmed that 98 percent of the informants felt that migration was a wise decision because, in the words of one questionnaire respondent .
34; you can earn money and improve the family economy." Undoubtedly, most of the respondents were members of migrant rather than migrant family. By discovering and financing new and "traditional" forms of leisure and consumption, the migrants from village B have developed a new modernity and identity that underlines the backwardness of the rest, so the existing transnational connections were one of the causes of the beginning of the new migration in the late 1970s and at the beginning.
The lack of well-established transnational connections in village B before the new emigration in the 1990s is more than compensated by the attitude of the local authorities towards emigration. In Village A, the county, district and village authorities fostered transnational links with the well-established overseas Chinese community in Singapore, triggering and sustaining new migration in the 1980s and 1990s. It is clear that the export of labor is the top priority of the district authorities, who are actively and confidently engaged in building a new overseas Chinese area along the lines of the old overseas Chinese areas along the coast.
However, the new policy allows banks to finance migration directly instead of through a government fund, thus expanding the scope of such practices and further integrating migration into the fabric of the mainstream Mingxi economy (interview with Mingxi branch president at . Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, June 23 2000; Fujian Qiao bao, April 18, 2002; Fujian Ribao, April 17, 2002).
TRENDS IN CHINESE MIGRATION: LESSONS FROM FUJIAN
In village A, the export of labor to Singapore, coupled with only a few initial connections to Europe, formed the pattern of later mass migration from the village; in village B, the Zhejiang network provided the. In village A, overseas Chinese connections and a "migration history" to Singapore formed a migratory character, while in village B, the Zhejiang network played a much more specific and concrete role in access. Overseas Chinese villages were given the freedom to restructure their economies around foreign donations and remittances.
National support for overseas Chinese ties gives local governments in sending areas the freedom to allow economic, political and cultural developments according to the aspirations of overseas Chinese. and thus also those of new immigrants) instead of the orthodox policies of the Chinese Communist Party in order to create or maintain a foreign influx. The authorities in village A embraced the national revaluation of overseas Chinese as soon as it was announced in 1978. Village B, with no previous overseas Chinese connection except tentative contact with the Zhejiang diaspora in Europe, reveals the demonstrative effect that the benefits of overseas Chinese.
As we have seen, the main reason for the increasing international migration from village B lies in the confluence of farmers' interests and support from the local government. The latter was keen to follow the example of the established overseas Chinese areas along the coast, and migration is a welcome way to earn foreign income and "reduce the pressure of unemployment and increase social stability" (interview with the chairman of the Mingxi county branch of the Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese, 1 August 1999). In our study of migrant families in village B, 95 percent had more contact with their immediate family.
Contacts on a scale previously impossible for Chinese migrants not only make distant destinations seem less distant, but communication and the possibility of frequent return trips strengthen the incentive for migrants to invest in local culture. In Village A, even migrants who left their villages in the early twentieth century are now returning to invest in local cultural life. Furthermore, the case of Village B shows how increased mobility in general, together with greater autonomy for local governments, facilitates the reach of migration networks and enables the growth of migration configurations in places outside of traditional overseas Chinese areas.
The emergence of international migration from places outside traditional overseas areas is part of the history and current growth of complex local migration systems involving both internal and international mobility. To avoid fines for fallow farmland, many families in village B had to resort to short-term leasing of land to migrants from poorer areas elsewhere in Mingxi or neighboring Ninghua County.
This point is demonstrated by the role of Zhejiang migrants in our case study of village B itself and by the importance of temporary circulation of female workers elsewhere in Fujian and contract labor migration to Singapore and Israel from village A. It is clear that we have only just witnessed the beginning of such a spatially cumulative migration from China. Hong Kong and New York: Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch and Oxford University Press.
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