Informality as an approach to claiming the right to resettlement and achieving inclusive rural-to-urban resettlement for landless villagers: The case of Hangzhou, China

ABSTRACTThis article discusses how to achieve inclusive resettlement for landless villagers amid China’s promotion of urbanization through resettlement. This research conceptualizes the right to resettlement in China by synthesizing the literature on resettlement, the right to the city, and informality. This research captures four subsets of rights to resettlement based on a review of existing resettlement literature, including rights to economic enhancement, spatial adaptation, social stability, and political inclusiveness. While state-led resettlement policies should have prioritized inclusive resettlement, our case study reveals the significant role played by villagers’ bottom-up approaches, utilizing informality and collective strategies, in enhancing inclusiveness. The research adopts an explanatory-sequential approach that uses principal component analysis, semi-structured interviews, and questionnaire surveys to investigate post-resettlement adaptation in 12 resettlement communities in Hangzhou, China. The empirical evidence suggests informal economic activities, spontaneous spatial transformation, hybrid governance structures, and non-institutionalized participation have contributed significantly to villagers claiming their right to resettlement. We conclude with recommendations for achieving inclusive resettlement.KEYWORDS: Inclusive resettlementthe right to resettlementinformalitylandless villagersurbanization AcknowledgmentsThe authors would like to thank the editor Dr. June Wang and three anonymous referees for their valuable comments on earlier drafts.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. According to the office of poverty alleviation and development (OPAD), the rural poverty line in 2021 is around 4,000 RMB (615 USD).2. In this context, the term state mode of production does not refer to the original concept proposed by Lefebvre and further developed by Brenner in their writings on state theory. Rather, it is used to emphasize the specific characteristics of the space that is produced, such as being instrumental, urbanized, homogenizing, and governable.3. According to the Measures for Public Notice of Land Acquisition, resettled villagers only have participation opportunities during “two notices and one registration” (liang gonggao, yi dengji): the notice of land requisition, the notice of compensation and resettlement plan, and the registration of compensation. However, such opportunities are often formalistic.4. This format is to report the Likert value mean of the variable. Prefix (SP, SO, E, P) indicates the dimension of factor analysis (see Table 2). Those without prefix indicates the results of survey questions that are not included in the final PCA results.5. More than 246 villages have been resettled in Hangzhou proper alone as of 2020.Additional informationFundingThis research is funded by an Insight Grant [reference number: 435-2018-0953] from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and Zhejiang Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars [LR21G030001].Notes on contributorsChen YangChen Yang is a PhD candidate in the School of Planning, University of Waterloo, Canada. His research interests include rural-to-urban resettlement, gentrification, urbanization, space syntax, and urban morphology in Chinese cities.Zhu QianZhu Qian is an associate professor in the School of Planning, University of Waterloo, Canada. His primary research interests lie in urban land-use reform and planning, urban morphology, and urban form in Chinese cities.Huan LiHuan Li is a professor at the Department of Land Resources Management, Zhejiang Gongshang University. His research addresses welfare, environmental, LUCC and social issues in urban or rural areas through the application of innovative geographic information system (GIS) methods.