Land relations in turmoil: Trans-local constructions of home among rural migrants in Xiamen, China

Within three decades, the People’s Republic of China has altered from a mass public rental society, in which private homeownership and commercial housing developments were discouraged by the socialist government, to an ultra-ownership society in which they are fervently championed by policy-makers, entrepreneurs and, arguably, even by the majority of ordinary Chinese people
(He and Wu, 2009; Huang, 2004; Huang, He and Gan, 2021; Wu, 2007). Figures expressive of this housing upheaval are astonishing. In much of the latter half of the twentieth century, private homeownership accounted for less than 30% of housing, but very rapidly “reached 85% in 2010 nationwide (70% in cities) and more than 90% in 2017 (87% in urban and 96% in rural China)” (Huang,
He, and Gan, 2021, p. 1). As Huang, He and Gan emphasize (2021, p. 2), the transition has benefitted the country’s rising middle classes, but not all of its population: “migrants in cities have been largely excluded from… [urban] homeownership and wealth accumulation”. Focusing on interconnections between China’s market-socialist reforms (including the housing reform and land reforms implemented in cities and rural peripheries) and trans-local aspects in rural migrants’ lives, we argue that the new Chinese dream of homeownership (Huang, 2004) has also influenced the life-paths, everyday valuations and place-related emotional belongings of rural migrants living and working in cities.