Underground and Invisible: Migrants Search for Home in Beijing

Beijing is a global city, a national capital, and center of Chinese politics, business, and cul­ture. The city attracts thousands of tourists, reporters, and political leaders every year. But the 3.1 million Chinese migrants who live in the city have not yet drawn the world’s attention. Across China, nearly 269 million migrants live in cities and towns, comprising a third of the country’s ur­ban population and one fifth of its total popula­tion of 1.357 billion. Rural-to-urban migrants have driven the growth of Chinese cities, both through their movement and labor in construction, man­ufacturing, and service industries. The vast ma­jority of young Chinese men and women who have flocked to Beijing left behind impoverished countryside towns in search of stable employ­ment, higher earnings, and a better quality of life for their families.

But “home” remains an elusive thing for the mil­lions of migrant workers scrapping out an exis­tence in the city. In Beijing, migrants face several barriers—political, economic, and social—that limit their right to a home and force many into a precarious underground existence.

Today, Beijing’s migrant workers and their fami­ly members have formed a literal city beneath a city. As of 2015, an estimated two million peo­ple are living one or two stories below street level in tunnels, storage cellars, and even sew­ers. These cramped spaces are often a mere 100 square feet, and lack basic amenities such as windows, ventilation, or proper sanitation. Nearly 20,000 of the city’s underground rooms are actually Cold War-era bomb shelters dug by locals for protection during a border war be­tween China and the Soviet Union in 1969. Now, migrant workers are transforming these former shelters into makeshift homes.

If China’s cities are supposed to be centers of opportunity, why are so many of Beijing’s mi­grants living in such dismal conditions?

There are several reasons. First, China’s outdated housing registration policy, known as hukou, pre­vents the vast majority of rural migrants from pur­chasing homes or fully integrating into urban life.

The hukou system was first conceived and in­stituted under Mao Zedong’s regime in the 1950’s as a policy to control and restrict the movement of China’s massive population. Every Chinese citizen’s hukou permit ties them to their place of birth, even after they move be­tween towns, cities, or provinces. This unique form of bondage presents a major institution­al and political obstacle for migrants pursuing a life in the city. Without a Beijing hukou per­mit (which is costly and difficult to obtain), a migrant with a rural hukou from their home­town in the countryside cannot receive hous­ing subsidies or other essential social services reserved for local, urban residents. These ser­vices include healthcare, pensions, and free public education for one’s children.

In effect, China’s housing registration policy rel­egates rural migrants in the city to the status of second-class citizens. The policy is a mod­ern-day form of institutionalized discrimination against tens of millions of people across China.

Most migrants are also priced out of Beijing’s formal housing market. They seek informal, un­derground housing out of economic necessity.

In recent decades, China’s economic growth, low interest rates, cheap credit, and government measures to support the housing market have led to significant appreciation of the value of ur­ban property. Along with Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, Beijing is now among the most expensive Chinese cities. Even local residents cannot buy the same homes after seeing their options which they could ten years ago. The Chinese government will likely continue to artificially support the real estate market in coming years, all for the sake of boost­ing national gross domestic product (GDP).

Faced with high prices, denied access to sub­sidies under the hukou system, and earning minimum wages in low-skill occupations (ru­ral migrants are often uneducated and can only perform low-wage jobs), it is no wonder why so many of Beijing’s migrants must rent homes un­derground. Subterranean units are technically il­legal to rent, but the sheer number of migrants in Beijing has developed a huge market for them outside of government regulation. Most units are still far cheaper than any comparable hous­ing that Beijingers can find above ground.

Scholars and the media are slowly bringing the lives of Beijing’s underground residents to light. In 2015, Al Jazeera profiled several basement-dwell­ers in the article “The Rat Tribe of Beijing.” The ar­ticle does the important job of humanizing mi­grant workers, explaining their circumstances and aspirations. However, it still employs the de­rogatory term “rat tribe” (shu zu), which reflects the cramped, dark spaces that migrants occupy underground. Other labels for migrants include “floating population” (liudong renkou), which im­plies laziness and vagrancy.

Overall, widespread social discrimination against migrants compounds the economic and politi­cal obstacles they face in housing and urban life. Despite being significant contributors to China’s economy, migrants have long been blamed for urban pollution, congestion, and overcrowd­ing. Multiple forms of prejudice are analyzed in a 2014 research paper published in the journal Urban Studies, entitled “Invisible Migrant Enclaves in Chinese Cities: Underground Living in Beijing, China.” The authors, Huang and Yi, claim, “the forced popularity of basement renting reflects the reality that housing [in China] has become an in­stitution of exclusion and marginalization”.

The paper also describes how many Beijing lo­cals fear that basement-dwelling migrants tax local infrastructure and public facilities, tarnish and bring crime to their neighborhoods, and de­value their property. Stereotypes abound that basement tenants are “abnormal, poor, dirty, chaotic, dangerous and threatening,” and these beliefs fuel “exclusion at the micro level by indi­viduals and communities”

Even when migrants practice common behav­iors—drying laundry outdoors, using public transportation, socializing in public squares and pavilions, etc.—urban locals may still consid­er them to be abnormal, or somehow separate from the rest of Chinese society.

All these misconceptions, stereotypes, and derogatory words matter because they im­ply that migrants don’t belong, even after liv­ing and working in a city like Beijing for years or decades. They create a distance between migrants and the rest of Chinese society that legitimizes prejudice and segregation in neigh­borhoods and communities.

In other words, a home in Beijing may not be considered an essential good, a human right, or a necessity for the poor and disadvantaged. Instead, a home has become a private good to be claimed on the housing market, and the struggle of one group to realize their right to a home can be misconstrued as an infringement on the rights of others.

Some migrants have managed to leave behind their underground dwellings through years of tireless work, frugality, and resilience. One man interviewed by Al Jazeera, Wei Kuan, lives in a 300 square-foot room with nine other men while saving his salary to move out and pur­chase a home. Once a criminal, he took on a se­ries of odd jobs and now earns a middle-class salary as an insurance salesman.

But Wei Kuan is just one individual. Uplifting un­derground migrants on a societal level will re­quire government action and systemic change. Despite the policy status quo, Beijing policy­makers can pursue a variety of measures that will aid all migrants in the city, not just those liv­ing underground.

First, policymakers at either the national or mu­nicipal level must be willing to reform—or even abolish—the hukou policy, which (as explained earlier) blocks millions of migrants in urban ar­eas from receiving housing subsidies.

Recently, China’s government actually loosened hukou regulations in some small and mid-tier cities, but left Beijing and other large cities un­touched. If officials in Beijing refuse to abolish hukou entirely, they may be willing to ease re­strictions and provide some form of subsidy to rural migrants in the near future.

Second, the Chinese government must construct more affordable housing units in Beijing to ac­commodate migrants, especially in low-cost ar­eas on the city’s outskirts. This effort must be met with greater investment in subways and low-cost public transportation. Surprisingly, many migrant workers in Beijing actually choose to live under­ground. Basements and bomb shelters in central areas position them closer to worksites and po­tential employers. Long-distance commutes and congested traffic waste precious time they do not have, while cars and taxis are unaffordable.

Third, discrimination against migrants must be addressed. Whether on the basis of migrants’ rural backgrounds, lack of education, or low-wage occupations, social discrimination is argu­ably one of modern China’s greatest ills.

There are no simple solutions to discrimina­tion, but local officials in Beijing and elsewhere could set an example by cracking down on un­fair behavior against migrant workers in labor and housing markets. Increased Chinese media attention for underground migrants could also help dispel locals’ misconceptions and foster greater acceptance.

Measures such as these would remove key in­stitutional, economic, and social barriers to housing in Beijing. They would afford millions of migrant workers the chance to bring their re­maining relatives from the impoverished coun­tryside into the prosperous city. The less tangi­ble benefits of stability, security, comfort, and status that a home affords would offer hope and opportunity to migrant families. More than that, progressive measures would allow over a million people to rise up out of the subterranean shad­ows and into the visible fabric of urban society, where real homes await. With luck, migrants’ dreams of home may not be so elusive after all.