From Society’s Margin to City’s Peripheries : Ambivalent Mobilities of Three Gorges Dam Young-adult Migrants in Guangdong, China

The Three Gorges Dam project (1994-2009) in Chongqing of China has created 1.35 million forced migrants. As the region adjacent to the reservoir could not afford to accept all the displaced; 96,000 were relocated to 11 provinces/cities. Among these “out-bound” (waiqian) migrants, 9,007 were moved 2,300 km away to coastal Guangdong during 2000-2004. Through soliciting testimonies from 32 young-adult “dam migrants” (aged 18-39) in Guangdong, this paper identifies a commonly shared ambivalence over the meaning of displacement such that the informants – after more than a decade of resettlement – still maintain different degrees of feeling both a stranger and local, a Guangdonger (Guangdong ren) and Chongqinger (Chongqing ren), and a sojourner and dweller. It is argued that they possess more complex movement imaginaries than older migrants, and experience a specific mode of marginalization.