This book provides first-hand, insiders perspectives on urban issues in China, aiming to provide a theoretically informed and empirically rich discussion of the new social landscape of urban China in the 21st century. The research reported encompasses both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, with the latter based on extensive and in-depth fieldwork. The authors, most of them being native Chinese, had distinctive advantages in gaining access to study subjects, and had intimate knowledge of the locations and people they studied. The books primary geographical focus is on southern China, especially Guangdong province. This region is in the forefront of Chinas transition to a market economy, and therefore constitutes an ideal social laboratory to study the key urban issues that have emerged in the last two decades. Combining ethnographic research along with survey-based quantitative analysis, this volume will appeal to students of urban issues in contemporary China, and it will generate important and fresh empirical and theoretical insights for the broader scholarly communities of area studies, urban studies, and urban sociology. It will also serve as a useful text for graduate courses and advanced undergraduate courses on China and urban sociology.

About the Editors:Zai Liang is professor of sociology at the University at Albany, SUNY, and director of Urban China Research Network. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago and conducted post-doctoral research at Brown University. He has served as chair of Asia and Asian American section of the American Sociological Association. His main research interests are in internal and international migration and urban sociology. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health as well as other private foundations.Steven F. Messner is Distinguished Teaching Professor of sociology at the University at Albany, SUNY. He received his Ph. D. in Sociology from Princeton University. His research focuses on social institutions and crime, understanding spatial and temporal patterns of crime, and crime and social control in China. In addition to his articles in professional journals and chapters in edited volumes, he is co-author ofCrime and the American Dream;Perspectives on Crime and Deviance;Criminology: An Introduction Using ExplorIt; and co-editor ofTheoretical Integration in the Study of Deviance and Crime andCrime and Social Control in a Changing China. He served as the 2010-11 President of the American Society of Criminology.Cheng Chen is associate professor of political science at the University at Albany, SUNY. She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 2003. Her research and teaching interests include post-communist politics, nationalism and nation-building, democratization, Chinese politics, and comparative-historical methodology. She is the author ofThe Prospects for Liberal Nationalism in Post-Leninist States (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2007) as well as many journal articles. Currently, she is working on a new book project examining the search for regime ideology in post-communist China and Russia.Youqin Huang is associate professor of geography and planning, and a research associate of the Center for Social and Demographic Analysis at the University at Albany, SUNY. She received her Ph.D. in Geography from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2001. She is interested primarily in the interaction between population behavior and geography. Her research has focused on housing, migration/mobility, urbanization and China. She has published in many of the leading journals in her fields of expertise.Contributors:Fuping Chen, Xiaojuan Chen, Eric Fong, Guangxu Ji, Cuiling Li, Jing Li, Zhen Li, Alan Smart, Josephine Smart, Jiashun Wang, Tao Xu, XiongduanYang

Section I. Migrant Workers and Community Reaction1. Job Mobility of Rural Migrants in Chinas Urban Labor Market: the Case of Pearl River Delta Region, Zhen Li and Zai Liang2. Economic Deprivation, Social Networks and Unprotected Rights A Study on Peasant Workers Collective Action in the Pearl River Delta, Xiaojuan Chen and Cheng Chen3. Institutionnel Segmentation and Psychosocial Repellence: Urban Residents Attitude toward Migrants, Jiashun Wang and Steven F. MessnerSection II. New Patterns of Urbanization4. On Not Wanting to Become Urban Ethnographic Perspectives from a Pearl River Delta Urban Community Transited from Rural Village, Cuiling Li and Josephine Smart5. The Development of Rural Village in Chinese City - A Case study of Zhu Village in Guangzhou, Fuping Chen and Eric Fong6. Changing Economy and Urbanization in a Chinese Ethnic Minority Village: The Case of Bai Peasants in Xizhou, Yunnan Province, Xiongduan Yang and Alan SmartSection III. Impacts of Globalization, Technology, and Markets on Urban China7. The Reconstruction of Social Support System for African Merchants in Guangzhou, China, Tao Xu and Zai Liang8. Mobile Phone Culture among the Information Have-less: A Case Study of Laid-off Workers in Shenyang City, China, Guangxu Ji and Youqin Huang9. Housing Property Rights Disputes in Urban Chinese Families: An Institutional and Sociological Perspective, Jing Li and Youqin Huang