The original proposal for my grant was to ‘investigate mechanisms in place for dispute resolution in extralegal contexts. The lack of enforceable property regimes in China would seem to stand in staunch opposition to prevailing growth theories that emphasize institutional stability and rule of law.’

Well, turns out it doesn’t really work, and that rule of law is still developing. This may seem obvious; let’s remember that I’m both young and naive. The past month has been spent establishing contacts, finding spots to return to (for verbal interviews), and trying to assess the feasibility of gathering information about different aspects of migration and growth, broadly between: 1) development of institutions (labor disputes, primarily over garnished wages or industrial accidents); 2) rural land reform (as it encourages even more urbanization); and 3) impacts of population movements on ’soft’ infrastructure in cities (schools, hospitals, legal system). 

I’ll probably focus on the third for the time – it will afford a strong reason to volunteer at a migrant school. This has myriad benefits: not only can I fulfill my dream of being like Edward James Olmos*; I need to strengthen the warm and fuzzy portion of the resume now that they’re in charge. Furthermore, English is my only real skill, and I’ve heard it could make the difference for some migrants between a job as a laborer and a service person; so there’s a definite chance of some realized benefit.

Actually it’s just that it seems the most feasible. Legal issues are tricky; and it would be exhausting to get a large interview sample. The interviews I’ve been conducting thus far often touch on legal disputes; and the story is usually the same. The other thing I’ve been noticing is that it’s fairly easy to get descriptions about rural reforms from people already here. You hear something like this quite often:

Well, I’m renting my land illegally right now. I’m not quite sure what the reforms mean. You know people have been doing this for years, I don’t know what’s different. It doesn’t provide that much money – if it did, do you think I’d be be <insert awful sounding menial task> here?

It also happens that there’s dozens of other (much more qualified / intelligent) white people researching land reform in China. It’s a very crunchy topic. Number of westerners researching or advocating solutions to primary education policy in China? Zero, as far as I know.

So, land reform going to be ancillary insofar as it is intimately linked with urbanization. Instead I’m going to focus on reforms that might allow cities to deal with the increases in population resulting from urbanization. I don’t expect to find anything substantial (“do this, and it will solve all your problems”) but rather hope to learn something new and interesting about how these changes might impact the future. 

Anything else I should consider? Also; anyone know where to find English teaching material… Like vocab words and lessons? I’ll be needing those soon. Also suggestions for names of students – like Megatron and Led Zeppelin. Quality names.