This article addresses an understudied issue in the current remittance scholarship in the Chinese context, and explores how overseas remittances reconfigure rural livelihood dynamics in the historical ‘emigration region of overseas Chinese’ (qiaoxiang) in contemporary southern China. Drawing on the different concepts of agrarian class positions (Cousins et al., 1992) and different categories of livelihood pathways (Dorward, 2009; Mushongah and Scoones, 2012), the article enriches the livelihoods approach and sheds light on agrarian class differentiation and livelihood transition in rural qiaoxiang. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a ‘remittance village’ in southwestern Guangdong combining in-depth interviews with rural inhabitants and participant observation, my empirical material shows that overseas remittances strengthen the village collective sector and drive the upgrading of agricultural production. However, overseas remittances are deeply intertwined with local dynamics of capitalist accumulation and agricultural commodification. This leads to rural households’ differential participation in farm and non-farm activities and drives complex processes of rural differentiation.
Keywords: overseas remittances, livelihoods approach, rural differentiation, qiaoxiang, China
Author’s biography:
Ruishi Zhen is a first-year PhD student at the Unit of Social Anthropology at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Her dissertation research examines the grassroots tinkering with drones in ecological agriculture in rural China, and uses it as a lens to unpack the opportunities and challenges faced with small ecological producers. She holds a masters degree in Asian Studies from the Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies at Lund University, Sweden.
Ethnologie Chinas 