Residential dissatisfaction of migrant workers living in urban villages and their responses : a case study of Baimang village in Shenzhen

Abstract

Residential dissatisfaction refers to the negative discontent sentiment which occurs when discrepancy between expectation and realistic living condition exists. The phenomenon is pervasive among the urban underclass and migrant populations, who are subject to a greater number of constraints. In the context of China's urbanization process, the typical representative is the migrant workers residing in urban village. The research intends to extract the ramifications of residential dissatisfaction and migrant workers coping strategies through combination of multiple qualitative methods. The migrant workers of Baimang village contributed to expressing the narrative through random sampling, snowball sampling and purposive sampling in Shenzhen. The residential dissatisfaction were categorized into three categories, ten specific themes. And the characteristics had classified as four types: population, spatial, economic revenue and universal through theme analysis. Further the concrete evolution process had been presented. The strategies employed by residents to address residential dissatisfaction were also structured in the form of transitional lineage encompassing individual, collective and policy-driven. This article provides insights into migrant workers responses to residential dissatisfaction in theory and case study on the context of urban village redevelopment in urbanized and developed area of China.