ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how the paddy field-migration predicament has emerged. It argues that the Chinese state has been a major driver of the current situation through its rural policies, which provide both constraints and opportunities with regard to possible household strategies at the nexus of farming and migration. Special attention is paid to the widespread adoption of post-Green Revolution farming technologies that have set free agricultural labour. These transformations are placed into the context of de-collectivization and marketization, the abolition of the collective welfare system, the new urban economy, and loosened migration restrictions – all of which have pushed peasant farmers to migrate and enhanced their precarity, which in turn makes them want to protect their fields as a safety net.
