Negotiating Infrastructural Injustice in Poverty Alleviation Resettlement: The Case of the Southern Shaanxi Migration Project in China

Abstract

This study responds to recent calls in migration research for a thorough investigation of infrastructural injustice in non-Western contexts. Using the southern Shaanxi migration project as a case study, the largest state-led population relocation project since the foundation of the People's Republic of China, we highlight three main findings. First, while the project has successfully contributed to ecological restoration and poverty alleviation, it has inadvertently created a passive form of migration infrastructural injustice, resulting in structural fragmentation of migrant families, dysfunctional family dynamics, and unequal intergenerational relationships. Second, although middle-aged and older-adult migrants and female migrants are the most vulnerable to infrastructural injustice, they demonstrate infrastructural agency by negotiating and responding to injustices through relational and collectivist approaches. Third, Confucian ethics function as a unique mediator, simultaneously complicit in infrastructural injustice yet capable of mitigating its effects by regulating and reshaping the nature of infrastructure. Finally, we call for situating infrastructural injustice within different cultural paradigms to demonstrate subjective responses that may contradict objective perceptions.