This thesis is based on the data collected in Ruili, a city on the Sino-Burmese border in Yunnan, China. It tries to answer the question: If Han people can make a good living in Ruil i, then why have young Dai villagers chosen to leave Ruili and live away from their hometown? This question led me to uncover the three waves of migration in Ruili since the 1950s, two of which were of Han people moving to Ruili and one was of Dai villagers trying to survive in the city. All of them were displaced from their hometowns to different directions. Through exploring how they came and how their situation was through a historical bottom-up perspective, I found the' three waves were closely connected with nation building and global neo-liberalism. Through the life trajectory of migrants in Ruili over fifty years, this thesis firstly demonstrates how the state objectified both people and land via ideological domination and state apparatus whilst sacrificing the sympathetic foundation in state making, hence showing that the state and its policies are the cause of inequality; secondly, compliance under coercion is a kind of agency utilised by people for different reasons; thirdly, cosmopolitan consciousness is embodied in the trans-territorial mobility of the migrants, calling for improvement of their survival environment and security in the city.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:601661 |
| Date | January 2013 |
| Creators | Hu, Yan |
| Publisher | Queen's University Belfast |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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