Citizenship on the move: the deprivation and restoration of emigrants'hukouin China

Publication Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

11-2020

Abstract

Scholars have long debated whether international migration impinges on states’ control over transborder populations. In this article, I lay bare how states consolidate control through the calculated manipulation of emigrant citizenship. Based on a genealogical interrogation of China’s emigrant citizenship policies from the 1950s to present and three months of fieldwork in an emigrant community in China, I illustrate that the state first revokes emigrants’ citizenship and then imposes selective conditions on its restoration upon their return. China’s otherwise domestically oriented citizenship regime, namely, the household registration (hukou) system, works similarly as an international immigration regime by selecting and documenting potential citizens. My study sheds new light on the understudied external control of the hukou system by examining how it limits emigrants’ right of resettlement and proscribes overseas dual residency. I argue that citizenship is anything but an enduring, unproblematic demographic fact. It is, in essence, a revocable, precarious politico-legal accomplishment. These malleable processes enable the state to redefine the citizenship of absent and returned members, reinsert the congruence between nationality and residency, and reinforce control over transborder populations. These findings may have implications for similar mechanisms of governing international migrants through documentation and legal codification beyond China.

Keywords

Emigrant citizenship, emigration state, transborder population, China, hukou, deprivation and restoration

Discipline

Asian Studies | Demography, Population, and Ecology | Immigration Law

Research Areas

Sociology

Publication

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

Volume

47

Issue

3

First Page

557

Last Page

574

ISSN

1369-183X

Identifier

10.1080/1369183X.2020.1788381

Publisher

Taylor and Francis

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2020.1788381

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