Seminar: « Towards a New Urban Regime? Reconfiguring Urban China through Internal Migration »
Over the past decade, China’s urban development model has entered a period of profound restructuring, marked by shifting relations between land urbanization, demographic incorporation, and territorial governance. In this evolving context, differentiated categories of internal migrants – long considered primarily as a homogeneous and flexible labor force supporting industrial and real-estate expansion – are increasingly positioned at the center of urban policies and local development strategies.
Focusing more specifically on new guaranteed and subsidized housing projects in the cities of Zhuhai and Shenzhen, this presentation explores the urban transformations associated with internal migration in contemporary China. Drawing on fieldwork conducted within the framework of China CoREF project CNRS|Inalco (2025–2026), it examines how processes of residential stabilization, social differentiation, and selective incorporation of migrant populations are reshaping urban production, public policy instruments, and metropolitan spatial configurations.
More broadly, the seminar reflects on the evolving relationships between mobility, urbanization, and governance in contemporary Chinese cities, using internal migration as a lens through which to investigate broader transformations in urban development. It will also open a discussion on the relevance of an emerging and potentially groundbreaking theoretical framework for understanding and interpreting these ongoing urban reconfigurations in contemporary China.
Speaker:
Cinzia Losavio holds a PhD in Geography and Urban Planning from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (2022). She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) as part of the China CoREF project (CNRS | Inalco). Her interdisciplinary research examines the intersections between housing production, the diversification and governance of internal migration, and urban development strategies in contemporary China.
Date: 25 June 2026
Time: 4:30pm–6:00pm
Location: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Room 233, Wong Foo Yuan Building
