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Squatting the Promised Land: Homeowner Mobilization in Urban China

Thesis advisor: Julia Chuang / In China’s overheating housing market, citizen grievances over “unfinished housing” (lanweilou) have become widespread. In lanweilou cases, developers presell housing units in high-rise apartments, initiate construction, then abscond without completing construction and renovation of these housing units. This paper documents the rise of a new social media-driven mode of mobilization now popular among homeowners of lanweilou housing. Based on ethnography and interviews with aggrieved homeowners in a southwestern Chinese city, this thesis argues that social media enables homeowners to report their grievances to a wider audience while providing diverse information about their cases for them to refine mobilizational targets. By combining authentic storytelling with self-censorship, homeowners can transform public attention in media channels into state intervention. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Sociology.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:BOSTON/oai:dlib.bc.edu:bc-ir_109298
Date January 2021
CreatorsLiu, Yitong
PublisherBoston College
Source SetsBoston College
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeText, thesis
Formatelectronic, application/pdf
RightsCopyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted.

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