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Container housing: Formal informality and deterritorialised home-making amid bulldozer urbanism in Shanghai

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  • Minhua Ling

Abstract

Bulldozer urbanism, fraught with violent demolition and forced relocation, exemplifies China’s urban transformation. Rural-to-urban migrant workers are particularly vulnerable during the process because of their in-between position in the socialist, territorialised hukou (residential registration) and land tenure systems. This paper presents in ethnographic details the practice of turning shipping containers into rental units for migrants seeking cheap housing alternatives to continue to live on Shanghai’s urban fringe. It reveals the nature and constraints of container housing that emerge out of the interplay between China’s socialist land tenure system, real estate marketisation, top-down population control and urban governance. Despite the neglected appearance of container housing, its existence and operation entail the acquiescence and surveillance of local state agents as well as entrepreneurs’ tactics of conformation, which results in formal informality and sustains structural inequality in state-led development. Container housing also contributes to the deterritorialisation of homemaking among migrant workers, who are channelled by hukou -related policies to invest and retire in their registered home places and feel removed from their urban dwelling in both time and space. The decreased significance of urban residence to migrant workers’ everyday life, as exemplified by container housing, facilitates bulldozer urbanism and perpetuates urban exclusion.

Suggested Citation

  • Minhua Ling, 2021. "Container housing: Formal informality and deterritorialised home-making amid bulldozer urbanism in Shanghai," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(6), pages 1141-1157, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:58:y:2021:i:6:p:1141-1157
    DOI: 10.1177/0042098019899353
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Fulong Wu, 2016. "Housing in Chinese Urban Villages: The Dwellers, Conditions and Tenancy Informality," Housing Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(7), pages 852-870, October.
    2. Hsing, You-tien, 2010. "The Great Urban Transformation: Politics of Land and Property in China," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199568048.
    3. Wallace, Jeremy, 2014. "Cities and Stability: Urbanization, Redistribution, and Regime Survival in China," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199378999.
    4. Siu Wai Wong, 2015. "Urbanization as A Process of State Building: Local Governance Reforms in China," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(5), pages 912-926, September.
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    Cited by:

    1. Stratton, Michael J. & Corneal, Lindsay M., 2023. "Development of a tiny house design tool to increase safety, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness," Innovation and Green Development, Elsevier, vol. 2(2).

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