ABSTRACT
People are the most important constituents within any agglomeration and its greatest driving force, and as a consequence of cumulative causation, the population of the Greater Bay Area has swelled to at least 86 million. The large differences in rural and urban living standards prompted people to move to the city, but the hukou system allowed the authorities to identify origins and remove those who could not demonstrate their right to live where they were living. The differentiation of types of hukou within the confines of cities such as Guangzhou, Dongguan or Shenzhen is especially odd because people may be residents of a city but not be recognised as such and not entitled to the services provided by the city government. Inter-provincial migrants have the strongest image, that of people leaving poorer regions or provinces in the west and north and moving to cities. However, intra-provincial migrants are actually more numerous.
