From side-work to main task: Housing, status, and Tibetan labour migration in Qinghai, China

Abstract

Across China, as in other parts of the world, urbanisation has accelerated at an unprecedented scale over the past 15 years. In farming areas of Qinghai in western China, large-scale rural–urban movement of Tibetan villagers began around 2010 – a time when state-led housing subsidy projects were launched. Drawing on ethnographic field research and focusing on the older cohort of rural Tibetan migrants to Xining, the largest city on the Tibetan Plateau, this article explores the complexities and linkages between state-led housing subsidy projects, status, and Tibetan labour migration. It examines how housing and family status intersect to shape patterns of Tibetan labour migration and gendered divisions of labour. This study highlights an important but less explored factor in migration studies: in my research sites, the recent large-scale Tibetan labour migration to cities has been driven by the desire to build new houses to secure family status as a result of the motives and social pressure created by state-led housing subsidy projects.