Making home on the urban fringe: rural migrant family life in Chongqing’s public rental housing

Public rental housing in China has generated sharply divided assessments. Some scholars and policy commentators present it as a major welfare gain, while others describe it as remote, poorly serviced, and stigmatized. This dissertation addresses that divide through the lived experiences of rural migrants residing in Chongqing’s public rental housing estates. It asks what public rental housing means in everyday life for the people who depend on it. The study speaks to anthropological debates on migration, citizenship, household strategy, care, and everyday urban life in China. Based on sustained ethnographic fieldwork in three large public rental housing estates in Chongqing, it shows that migrant settlement was organized not only around wage work, but also around family life, childcare, schooling, and long-term urban survival. Public rental housing provided residents with affordable, relatively stable accommodation, access to public schools, and opportunities to build neighborhood ties and local support networks. At the same time, it exposed them to long commutes, peripheral location, uneven services, and the social stigma attached to subsidized housing. The dissertation offers a resident-centered account of public rental housing and shows both the real gains it provides and the limits it imposes on migrant urban life in contemporary China.