The Urbanization of People

This is an enormous endeavor well accomplished. Backed up by rich fieldwork and painstaking research over many years, this book tells a poignant story of China’s prodigious urbanization, on the back of a huge migrant labor class, through their and teachers’ struggles in the arena of education. Friedman also advances a provocative and rigorous theorization of the process linked to the state-designed sociospatial hierarchy and biopolitical machinery. -- Kam Wing Chan, University of Washington
A revealing study of migrant schools as the lever of China’s unique project of ‘just-in-time’ urbanization. Friedman shines an essential light on the human struggles among migrant children, parents, and teachers and the rigid sociospatial class and citizenship hierarchies that lock them in place even as they move to the cities. A must-read for scholars in education, labor, development, urban, and China studies. -- Ching Kwan Lee, University of California, Los Angeles
In this magnificently researched and troubling study of China's urbanization process, Friedman situates migrants—teachers, children, parents, education activists—at the center of a tale of exploitative, unequal development, in which rural migrants are simultaneously highly valued and yet treated as outsiders, easily disposed of. A phenomenal piece of work in every way. -- Ralph A. Litzinger, Duke University
Friedman's study takes a whole-person and intergenerational approach to the question of how China's national policies and access to its capital city's public services are designed to discriminate and exclude this dynamic population that the city simultaneously relies upon for its informal labour. * China Labour Bulletin *
The book is expertly researched, and rich with both data and personal interviews. It will be of interest to a range of readers beyond the academic sphere and including those interested in development, the economy, and social studies in China and the region. * Asian Labour Review *
A must-read reference for studying Chinese urban politics. * China Quarterly *
An excellent case study for research on immigration between nations. * Developing Economies *
A serious and thought-provoking account of the experiences of people who have relocated to the city for work opportunities. * Choice *
An essential guide to both the ways in which the country’s authorities have succeeded in engineering solutions to dilemmas that have stymied the development of other states and the degree to which its leaders have sabotaged the aspirations of critical segments of their citizenry. * International Labor Review *
Offers excellent raw material on a profoundly subaltern working class social group in China. * Against the Current *
Surfaces the voices of rural migrant families caught between economic imperatives and shifting state priorities. * Pacific Affairs *