Migrants and the new stage of public housing reform in China

In 2010s, for the first time, the Chinese government opened access to housing and urban citizenship for Chinese internal migrants on a broad scale. The Chinese government treats these reforms as a solution to multiple problems, including economic downturn, the slowing growth of domestic demand, increasing shortages in urban labour, and increasing social inequalities between local residents and migrants, as well as between advantaged and disadvantaged migrants. Unfortunately, the road map to achieving these goals at the local level has been missing. Although various policy implementations have emerged across Chinese cities, only the city of Chongqing has realized the national goals at a broad level, regarding the elimination of hukou barriers, improving access to public rental housing and providing housing assistance to the substantial population of migrants (over 260 thousand by 2016 in Chongqing). While the gap between policy rhetoric and policy practice has increased, very little research has adequately addressed the gap based on revealed data. Thus, taking Chongqing as an example, this thesis provides an overall examination of the new stage of public rental housing development in China from the perspectives of both welfare regimes and housing governance. Findings provide improved knowledge of the new housing strategies from a more global perspective and of the roles that different actors have played in ensuring the construction of new public rental housing. Based on original empirical data of Chongqing, this thesis also considers the ways migrants respond to the new policies and their respective impacts on migrants, regarding the preference for accessing public rental housing and the preferences for settling in cities permanently.