ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the hukou system, one of the Chinese core socio-economic institutions, is critical in determining the marginalised status of rural migrant workers and to investigate why most such migrants can work in cities but are deprived of their rights to settle there. It argues that the transformation of the regime of urban accumulation is the key to the marginalisation of rural migrant workers. The chapter reviews the existing theses that conceptualise three pertinent concepts: social stratification, inequality and marginalisation. This is followed by a depiction of the peripheral status of rural migrant workers in cities. This chapter examines how the transformation of the regime of urban accumulation is linked to the deprivation of migrants' right to permanent urban residency. The chapter demonstrates that in transitional urban China, rural migrant workers have, in many respects, been set apart from the mainstream of society.
