ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an ethnographic study of one well-known community of migrants in Beijing that is usually called 'Zhejiang Village'. Zhejiang Village is situated in Fengtai district in the south of Beijing municipality. Zhejiang Village is the biggest community of non-hukou migrants in Chinese cities. Chain migration is generally thought to help migrants fit quicker into the destination society. The shift from marketing outside to inside of Zhejiang Village itself promoted mass migration. Zhejiang villagers usually have no tradition of international migration, and they have recently 'simply' entered the international market as part of the much broader northern Chinese trend of trade and emigration to Russia and eastern Europe. Since 1992, the local government of Beijing tried to intervene and formed relationships of cooperation with individuals in the village for joint public-private funding of the construction of a large marketplace, the Jingwen Garment Wholesale Centre.
