Growth of rural migrant enclaves in Guangzhou, China: Agency, everyday practice and social mobility

Previous studies have attributed the proliferation of rural migrant enclaves in China’s large cities primarily to the constraints limiting migrants’ residential options. Through an ethnographic exploration of Xiaohubei, a migrant enclave with a high concentration of Hubei rural migrants and small-scale garment producers in Guangzhou, this paper sheds new light on the dynamics and implications of the migrant enclaves. It argues that rural...