Balancing Acts

Abstract

On 18 November, a fire broke out in a popular housing block inhabited mostly by migrant workers in Beijing's Daxing district, killing nineteen. Citing the need to ensure safety, in a matter of days the local authorities forced tens of thousands of 'low-end people' (diduan renkou) to abandon their dwellings in the suburbs of the Chinese capital, showing absolutely no regard for their livelihoods. Families who had moved from all over China and had, in some cases, lived in Beijing for years were effectively thrown out on the street and left to their own fate in the freezing northern winter. In just a few days they lost everything, a cruel reminder of the precarity inherent to the life of the Chinese migr ant. This issue of Made in China includes a series of essays that examine different declinations of precarity.