DDRI:State and Society Interactions: Negotiating Governance, Migration, and Citizenship

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This doctoral dissertation research project will analyze cultural practices, population migration, and relationships between the state and its citizens in order to better understand socioeconomic inequality, nationalism, and ethnic conflict. Increasing income inequality between the majority and minority groups often results in increased discontent among ethnic minority groups. This study will contribute to knowledge about whether or not economic development in a peripheral region will reduce such dissatisfaction and result in growing attachment to the state by ethnic minorities. Fundamental research about the geographic patterns of ethnic conflict and government responses is essential for understanding political and economic trajectories in many nations, including regions where such conflicts have directly involved the U.S. and in nations like China, where such dynamics may have profound impacts on the nation's future development. Project findings will inform policy-makers and researchers in government and other organizations about the consequences of development policies in regions heavily populated by ethnic minorities. The project will advance collaboration between U.S. and Chinese scholars. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award also will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.In spite of claims that national identities are changing with the onset of globalization, local attachments and independence movements persist and often are accompanied by violence. Conflict about cultural, ethnic and religious practices overlays key political questions of citizenship, identity, and belonging in China. Research focusing on Chinese society and politics has concentrated on the eastern coastal cities, but more attention is needed to better understand the impacts of central governmental policies at the provincial and local levels in the nation's western autonomous regions, which have large numbers of ethnic minorities. In order to examine broader questions about state-society relations and claims to territory, the doctoral student conducting this project will examine urban governance, rural-to-urban migration, and how citizenship is conceptualized in northwest China. She will seek answers to two major questions: (1) How do various state actors use strategies of economic development and community governance to assert government control at the urban neighborhood level? (2) How do citizens from both majority and minority ethnic groups conduct their daily lives and interactions with state agencies in these political and cultural settings? The student will combine ethnographic methods of interviews and participant observation with quantitative survey data about urban life collected via smartphones. This investigation into everyday urban experiences at the neighborhood level will shed light on the significant connections between politics and daily life in Xinjiang, a peripheral region of China marked by uneven development.