3rd PhD Publication on EGE

🚨 New publication from my PhD research 🚨

I’m pleased to share my third journal article derived from my doctoral work:

“Still never a local without a local hukou”: hukou stickiness and rural–urban migrants’ lived experiences of reform in China’s Pearl River Delta

Link to the published article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15387216.2026.2655116

This paper advances the concept of “hukou stickiness” to explain why, despite decades of reform, hukou status continues to shape migrants’ access to housing, education, and social security in urban China. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork in the Pearl River Delta, the study highlights how institutional design, local implementation, and migrants’ own anticipatory strategies interact to sustain inequalities—often in ways that formal policy reforms fail to resolve.

The findings contribute to ongoing debates on urbanisation, migration, and governance by showing that reform outcomes are not only institutional, but also lived, interpreted, and negotiated on the ground.

My sincere thanks to the Editor, Associate Editor, and three anonymous reviewers at Eurasian Geography and Economics for their constructive and thoughtful guidance throughout the review process.