Regulating, Managing and Sorting Mobile Populations: Canada’s International Mobility Program and China’s Hukou Policies

This paper compares Canada’s International Mobility Program (IMP) and China’s Hukou policy in its first-tier cities, specifically Beijing and Shanghai. The paper has two objectives. First, it analyzes how Canada and China’s first-tier cities regulate, manage and sort their mobile populations. Second, it presents the lived experiences of Chinese education migrants in British Columbia, and Beijing and Shanghai in order to shed light on the gap between government policies and education migrants’ lived experiences of trying to obtain permanent residency in Canada, or Beijing/Shanghai hukou. The paper stands out in studying Chinese education migrants in China and in Canada side by side. But in China, particular parallels can make international comparisons useful. China’s household registration system (hukou) divides citizens into rural and urban hukou holders, but also into hierarchically differentiated urban hukou holders (i.e. based on first-tier, second-tier, and third-tier cities, and small towns). These hierarchies imply differentiated and unequal distribution, including in education resources, for those who move away from their place of registration. In a country sharply divided along rural and urban lines, and also along hierarchies differentiating urban administrative regions, hukou and locale classifications differentiate rights and benefits. The paper is based on an analysis of policy documents and semi-structured interviews with education migrants in China, “returned’ education migrants, and Chinese migrants in Canada.