Over the past four decades, China has witnessed significant rural-urban migration driven by rapid industrialisation and urbanisation. Under the household registration system (hukou), migrants are often prevented from enjoying full welfare entitlements in their urban destinations. Despite the ongoing hukou reform that aims to equalise welfare distribution among all Chinese citizens regardless of their hukou status, migrants in urban cities still face persistent barriers to accessing welfare benefits and services. This seminar examines and compares the subjective welfare experiences of migrants in three Chinese metropolises, namely Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, by introducing the concept of ‘welfare boundary’. Welfare boundary distinguishes social citizenship rights between insiders and outsiders based on spatial differences and is marked by a compromised threshold resulting from the conflict between the universal citizenship rights and limited local resources. It consists of two forms – (i) institutional welfare boundary derived from government policies that determine migrant eligibility for social provisions and (ii) perceptional welfare boundary that reflects migrants’ subjective experiences with the urban welfare system. As insufficient attention has been given to the latter in existing literature, this seminar draws data from focus group interviews with 83 migrants (27 from Beijing, 29 from Shanghai and 27 from Shenzhen) of various age groups and diverse backgrounds to explore the perceptional welfare boundary of Chinese migrants and its variations across these metropolises. The findings suggest that welfare boundary manifests an intended governance of citizenship and mobility that demonstrates a model of ‘differential inclusion’. Migrants experience varying levels of welfare boundary in different cities and adopt diverse coping strategies based on specific policies and rational calculations to negotiate for better welfare benefits. However, their power and influences in the boundary-making process remain limited.

Qiaobing Wu is Associate Head and Associate Professor of the Department of Applied Social Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her primary area of research centres on the health and well-being of children and youths, particularly in the context of migration. Her current research focuses on the impact of migration policy, welfare boundary and social integration on the well-being of children from migrant families, the resilience and mental health of migrant youth across Eastern and Western countries, education and psychological well-being of migrant and left-behind children in China as a consequence of the large-scale rural-urban migration, and identity and health-related outcomes of children and youth resulting from the cross-border migration between Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland. Wu’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation of the United States, the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust Fund, Worldwide Universities Network Research Development Fund and the Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies. Her publications appear in international interdisciplinary journals such as Social Science & Medicine, Population, Space and Place, American Journal of Community Psychology, Youth & Society, Children and Youth Services Review, and Humanities and Social Sciences Communications.