Building wealth through a stratified inclusion: the point-based hukou system in Zhuhai

Résumé En

In the last decade, forced to promote the social inclusion of a soaring number of migrants in cities, the Chinese central government has issued a number of measures to ease the delivery of urban hukou, to award subsidies for social housing, and to facilitate access to education and to social security. However, on the city level, internal migrants' integration policies are strictly intertwined with the developmentalist aspirations of local governments. The size of cities, their economic weight as well as their growth pattern have acquired special significance in their relation to social policies and population management. The point-based system is the new framework regulating urbanization patterns, controlling social benefits allocation and granting full urban membership. Outlining the main hukou policies in Zhuhai, a typical third-tier city located in the Pearl River Delta, and observing their implementation, this paper explores how the point-based system has contributed to the deconstruction of the internal migrants' category, promoting a stratified and selective integration model. While handpicking the youngest, the best educated and the most qualified migrants as valuable resources for local development, the new pattern generates a highly competitive system for the "liudong renkou", increasing the socio-spatial differentiation of urban space.