ABSTRACT
The experiences of peasant migrants in the Chinese city, though varied, reflect their positions as outsiders to the urban society and labor market. This chapter focuses on the relationship between migration and labor market processes and segmentation, and peasant migrants’ exclusion from urban membership and their responses to such exclusion. In the city, employment practices from recruitment and job placement to wages, benefits, and working conditions are all illustrative of the deep segmentation in the urban labor market that relegates peasant migrants to the bottom rungs. This labor market hierarchy results not only from human capital differentials but also from the institutional and social stratification that defines permanent migrants as the elite and temporary migrants as outsiders. Peasant migrants have, at the same time, developed mobility and social strategies that help them deal with the exclusion and discrimination they face in the city.
