This post is part of a feature on “Urban Struggles,” moderated and edited by Raúl Acosta (LMU Munich), Flávio Eiró (Radboud University Nijmegen), Insa Koch (LSE) and Martijn Koster (Radboud University Nijmegen).

Over the past two decades, the central authorities in the People’s Republic of China have shown an increasing concern about the inequalities between urban dwellers and predominantly rural hukou (residence registration) holders that have migrated to the cities. In 2016 a new policy on urban planning coined the concept of ‘livable cities’ and stated that migrants from the countryside have the same rights as urban residents to basic public goods and services such as healthcare and education (Xinhua News Agency 2016). Migrant workers often account for 30 per cent of the population in China’s major cities, but they comprise 80 per cent or more of the total population in urban villages or ‘villages-in-the-city’, rural villages converted into urban communities (shequ) (Chung 2010). The former village of Pine Mansion (the pseudonym of my main field site) is in a transitory state, awaiting the completion of the three phases of urban redevelopment (2010–2018, 2018–2026 and 2026-2034). During this transition, natives and migrants are subject to variegated governance, ‘diverse modes of government – disciplinary, regulatory, pastoral – that administer populations in terms of their relevance to global capital’ (Ong 2006: 78). While Ong shows how variegated governance rests on zoning technologies and results in ‘graduated sovereignty’, here this variegation occurs within the same microspatial unit.