The Leap to the City: Resistance and transition in a Chinese village facing urbanisation

This article is based on a field survey conducted in a village whose lands were expropriated, its homes destroyed, and its inhabitants relocated to two blocks of flats built about a hundred metres from the village, and in which new neighbourhood administrations were set up. Supervision of the evictions by local authorities seems crucial in the process of adapting former villagers to their status as urban dwellers. However, the interactions between cadres and people in their new urban setting cannot be understood without taking into account the resistance that preceded the eviction, a resistance that we will seek to reconstruct