BOOK REVIEWS

R. Iredale, N. Bilik, S. Wang, G. Fei and C. Hoy, Contemporary Minority Migration, Education and Ethnicity in China

Urban/rural migration represents an important dimension in the development of a country, and this is true for China. Spared any rural exodus until quite recently, China is today experiencing massive internal migration that is redrawing the human and economic landscape. The policy of reform and opening up, matched by the progressive lifting of the restrictions on internal mobility that started in the 1980s, has permitted a greater freedom to move. Large numbers of peasants, but also inhabitants of less economically favoured regions, are flooding in particular into the big cities in the east of the country in search of work and better, so they hope, living conditions. Offering an in-depth analysis of this internal migration, the book proves indispensable for gaining a better understanding of the changes inherent in China’s transition from a planned to a market economy.

The authors concentrate on studying the migration of minorities from a perspective that is at once social, economic and ethnic, measuring the migratory flows, in particular those of minorities in relation to those of the general population, and analysing the effects of migration on the status of the migrant families. They devote particular attention to the role of education in the migratory process, while also focusing on the causes motivating migration and the conditions under which it is conducted. They also identify the circumstances, in particular the political circumstances, which have positive implications for the status of migrants.

Three ethnic minorities are favoured in this approach: Tibetans, Mongols and Uighurs, and this for a variety of reasons. First of all, these minorities are localised in border regions in the north and the west of the country, regions that have been relatively less well researched. Next, these groups are considered highly unstable, something which makes their study particularly interesting. Finally, they are very heterogeneous in terms of level of education, lifestyle and degree of interaction with other ethnic groups, in particular the Han.

Aside from the introduction and the conclusion, the work is structured in seven chapters. Chapter 2, “Migration research background”, draws up a report on the question of migration and reviews the different theories of the phenomenon before applying itself to a description of the Chinese case, including the flow of internal migration and the role of the government in the migratory process. In Chapter 3, “Ethnicity and minority education policy”, concepts of ethnicity and of “Chineseness” from the dynastic era to the present day are developed, followed by a presentation of the policies implemented with regard to minorities in the field of education. Chapter 4, “Overall minority movement”, describes the intra and inter-provincial migrations of the minorities: favoured destinations, status of the migrants before and after migration, etc. The following three chapters, “Inner Mongolia and Mongol movement” (Chapter5), 5), “Tibet and Tibetan movement” (Chapter 6), “Xinjiang and Uighur movement” (Chapter 7), present case studies on the three minorities in question. Each chapter follows the same outline: geographical distribution, socio-economic and cultural characteristics, and education. Finally, Chapter 8, “Beijing’s growing ethnic minorities”, takes its point of departure in the results of the Sample survey of ethnic minority migration of 1996-97 and concerns itself with the migrants originating from Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang who have installed themselves in Peking. Each of these chapters paints a picture of the tackled themes that is both rich and precise, neglecting neither the historical, the cultural, nor the human dimension, something which, it must be underlined, is rare and thus highly valuable.

We can therefore keenly recommend this work to anyone interested in questions of ethnicity and migration in today’s China in transition.

Translated from the French original by Nick Oates