Title: Higher degree of willingness to move and better - PDF document

Title: Higher degree of willingness to move and better post-resettlement income restoration result: The evidence from China’s poverty alleviation resettlement 1 Xiujun Tai Shanxi Normal University, Shanxi Province, China Email: taixiujun@163.com Phone: +86 13643573544 Mark Yaolin Wang Melbourne University, Melbourne, Victorary, Australia Aiguo Zhang Shanxi Normal University, Shanxi Province, China Quanbao Jiang Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, China 1 This paper was jointly supported by the project of National Social Science Foundation of China (12BJL076) and the project of National Social Science Foundation of China(15BMZ094). 1

Higher degree of willingness to move and better post-resettlement income restoration result: The evidence from China’s poverty alleviation resettlement Abstract: Contrary to the common belief that resettlement in China is forced, the Chinese government’s recent poverty alleviation resettlement policy and guidelines list voluntary resettlement as the number one principle. However, the guidelines are ambiguous about the concept of voluntary resettlement and how to determine such voluntarism. Subsequently, this ambiguity also influences the policy design and implementation. Using survey information collected from 554 resettled rural households in Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces in China, this paper examines whether resettlers’ willingness to move and livelihood capital prior to resettlement has an influence on income after relocation. The results show that, despite the stipulation that resettlement must be voluntary, resettlers demonstrate diverse degrees of willingness to move. Our findings show that the greater the participation of the to-be-relocated residents during resettlement, the more likely they are to accept the new living environment, change means of livelihood actively and find a well-paid job. By contrast, those with no significant increase in income are typically either forced to move, are following the crowd or ultimately become reluctant movers as the government cuts off essential services. Our study also shows that for migrants with a low degree of willingness to move, natural and physical capital play major roles in post-move income restoration, whilst for voluntary movers, social, human and financial capital are vital. Key words: willingness-to-move; poverty alleviation resettlement; income restoration; participation; China 2

I Introduction Since 2000, the Chinese government has been making significant efforts to relocate populations living in areas, deemed ‘poverty’ areas, typically locations of harsh and fragile environment. By 2015, the central government had invested 36.3 billion RMB (US$5.5 billion) to resettle over 6.8 million from their poverty-stricken areas, under the so-called Poverty Alleviation Resettlement (PAR) program. 2 According to the 13 th Five-year Plan (2016-2020), in the next five years, a further 10 million people will be relocated under the PAR program. Unlike China’s other resettlement programs related to engineering projects, such as the Three Gorges Dam, PAR does not have specific deadlines and local residents do not have to forgo their farming or residential land post-resettlement. Theoretically, this offers local government enough time to ensure the conditions to enable resettlement to be ‘voluntary’ and in return, resettlers have more choices about whether to move, when to move and where to move. Thus far, PAR is considered perhaps the least controversial resettlement program in China. In fact, resettlement in China does not have a good reputation. Over the years, conflicts arising from resettlement programs have been increasing, both in number and severity (McDowell and Morrell, 2014). As the push for voluntary resettlement is intended to respect resettlers’ rights and decrease the degree of conflict, both scholars and the Chinese government officials have sought to ascertain modes of transferring involuntary resettlement into those voluntary (Chen, 2004; Chen, 2006; 2 See the news report about China’s 13th five-yea- plan http://finance.ifeng.com/a/20151016/14023471_0.shtml 3

Cernea, 2008; Chatterjee, 2009; Sheng, et al., 2009; Mathur, 2013; Wilmesen, 2015). However, two fundamental research gaps can be identified in studies of voluntary PAR. The first one is: how does one define voluntarism? In fact, some projects labeled as so-called ‘voluntary’ resettlement still force people to move through government tactics such as reducing or stopping the supply of water, electricity or other public services (Wilmsen and Wang, 2015), or cajoling residents to move through false promises (Yntiso, 2002). In China, many resettled are simply ‘morally hijacked’ into moving (Kai and Dan, 2007). For example, as state project related resettlement projects are part of broader national strategies, residents who refuse to relocate are accused of a lack of so-called spirit of “sacrifice individual benefit for the national benefit”. Kai and Dan (2007) argue that resettlement cannot be treated as voluntary if resettlers do not have the opportunity to say no. Scholars also argue that the boundary between voluntary and involuntary is often blurred (Xue et al., 2013; Arandel and Wetterberg, 2013). The fact that resettlement is an extensive process also complicates this dichotomy. Through a comparison of China’s PAR program (identified as voluntary resettlement in literature) and Three Gorges resettlement (identified as involuntary resettlement), Wilmsen and Wang (2015) find that some elements of involuntariness are contained in the process of voluntary migration project, whereas the phenomenon of being willing to be resettled as soon as possible exists in involuntary migration program. The second research gap is the relationship between voluntarism and performance in post-resettlement livelihood restoration. It is well established that livelihood capital 4

(natural, physical, human, social and financial capital) are major factors influencing livelihood restoration after resettlement (Chambers and Conway, 1992; Ellis, 2007;Sayatham and Suhardiman, 2015; Nguyen,et al, 2016 ). The performance in post-resettlement livelihood restoration is related to the quantity and structure of one’s available livelihood capitals and whether one’s livelihood restoration strategies are appropriate (Fang et al., 2014 ， Pietkiewicz ， 2015). During the resettlement process, however, capital quantity and structures change, therefore, household livelihood strategies must change correspondingly. For example, due to reduction or total loss of farmland, a family may have to seek alternative income or seek new labor skills. Therefore, family livelihood will is likely to be insecure, at least in the short term whilst new income sources are being secured (Nakayama et al., 1999; Agnes et al., 2009). Although Cernea’s impoverishment risks and reconstruction (IRR) model (1997; 2000; 2008) and his eight impoverishment risks through displacement have since been demonstrated in many empirical studies, such as massive losses in welfare after relocation (Fang et al., 2014), few studies have focused on whether the risks and welfare losses are related to the lack of livelihood capital after resettlement or related to low degree of willingness to move. We know that voluntary migrants, based on existing definitions, have a higher degree of satisfaction than involuntary movers (Dhakal et al., 2011), and better capital restoration than involuntary ones (Li, et al., 2014), but there are few studies on the correlation between the degree of voluntariness and performance of economic restoration. Understanding this relationship is crucial in 5

the search for more effective poverty alleviation policy. At present, most studies rigidly divide resettlement into voluntary and involuntary based on whether or not residents have the right to refuse relocation at time of moving. Xue et al (2013) add compulsorily voluntary and induced voluntary to full voluntary and full involuntary types of resettlement. Thus far, research has paid little attention to the empirical research about whether higher degree voluntariness for removal has a better livelihood restoration after resettlement than lower ones. The objective of this article is to examine the influence of degree of resettlers’ voluntarism on their economic recovery in the post resettlement period, and to examine the relationship between voluntariness and post-relocation livelihood restoration. The rest of the paper is organized as follows: section two introduces the practice of poverty alleviation resettlement in China; section three is research design; section four presents our results; this is followed by discussion section; the final section is conclusions and recommendations. II The Practice of Poverty Alleviation Resettlement in China Large-scale PAR in China began from 1983 (Tang, 2005). To encourage poor households living in “Three Wests” 3 region to move to more favorable natural conditions in Hexi corridor, both Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region government and Gansu province government organized China’s first large scale poverty alleviation resettlement project with the support of the central government (Feng, 1998). Both 3 Three west is the abbreviation of three extreme poverty areas in China, including,Xihaigu region in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Dingxi region and Hexi region in Gansu province, which are jointly called Three Wests,. 6