Rural Migrants and Settlement Rights in Early Twentieth-Century Shanxi: A Study of “Class Background Registers”

Shanxi experienced a severe population shortage after the late Qing Dingwu famine. The frequent disasters and warfare of the Republican era further increased population movements in north China, and in addition to northeast China, Shanxi became a major destination for migrants. In this period over two million migrants settled in Shanxi. Those that settled in the countryside formed a unique social group of immigrant households. The kinship and territorial bonds of north Chinese villages are well known, and such villages are often considered to have been very insular and xenophobic communities. Migrant households found it difficult to join the village community, and often had no choice but to live precarious lives on the outskirts of villages. Migrant households had to acquire “settlement rights” in the village in order to have any chance of survival and development. But settlement rights could not be achieved overnight; they were not only a matter of time, but also involved certain requirements and favorable circumstances. Through a close examination of “class background registers” compiled during the Four Cleanups movement (1963–1966), this article shows how migrant households in late Qing and Republican China used famine as an opportunity to gradually acquire settlement rights. On the one hand, migrants used wage labor, tenancy, and credit to form dependent relations through land with resident households. On the other hand, they used social relations, adoption, and uxorilocal marriage to form kinship relations with resident households. Compared to south China, where village settlement rights emphasized recognition of common ancestry, settlement rights in north China villages emphasized common lived experience. This difference is an important factor in explaining rural social formation and development in north China.