ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the curvilinear relationship between China's repressive authoritarian system and anti-migration mobilization in the country. Migration has always been a feature of social life, everywhere and around the world and population movements are only part of the complex contributing forces influencing violent and non-violent conflict. Framed in a rational cost and benefit analysis, the costs of mobilizing against migrants are deemed too high in an authoritarian setting, whereas the benefits of mobilization, even if violent, often supersede the costs in a democratizing setting. As a result, one could anticipate Sons of the Soil (SoS) conflict occurring in democratizing countries to be more lethal than SoS conflict in authoritarian countries. The political regime and political liberalization may also explain why SoS conflicts are more lethal in certain political contexts than in others. When SoS conflicts arise in China, they are usually isolated, small-scale disputes concentrated in a handful of prefectures.
