Amid a vast influx of rural migrants into urban areas, China has allowed cities wide latitude in providing education and other social services. While millions of people have been welcomed into the megacities as a source of cheap labor, local governments have used various tools to limit their access to full citizenship.

The Urbanization of People reveals how cities in China have granted public goods to the privileged while condemning poor and working-class migrants to insecurity, constant mobility, and degraded educational opportunities. Using the school as a lens on urban life, Eli Friedman investigates how the state manages flows of people into the city. He demonstrates that urban governments are providing quality public education to those who need it least: school admissions for nonlocals heavily favor families with high levels of economic and cultural capital. Those deemed not useful are left to enroll their children in precarious resource-starved private schools that sometimes are subjected to forced demolition. Over time, these populations are shunted away to smaller locales with inferior public services.

Based on extensive ethnographic research and hundreds of in-depth interviews, this interdisciplinary book details the policy framework that produces unequal outcomes as well as providing a fine-grained account of the life experiences of people drawn into the cities as workers but excluded as full citizens.

"Friedman's study takes a whole-person and intergenerational approach to the question of how China's national policies and access to its capital city's public services are designed to discriminate and exclude this dynamic population that the city simultaneously relies upon for its informal labour." - China Labour Bulletin

"The book is expertly researched, and rich with both data and personal interviews. It will be of interest to a range of readers beyond the academic sphere and including those interested in development, the economy, and social studies in China and the region." - Asian Labour Review

"A must-read reference for studying Chinese urban politics." - China Quarterly

"An excellent case study for research on immigration between nations." - Developing Economies

"A serious and thought-provoking account of the experiences of people who have relocated to the city for work opportunities." - Choice

"An essential guide to both the ways in which the country’s authorities have succeeded in engineering solutions to dilemmas that have stymied the development of other states and the degree to which its leaders have sabotaged the aspirations of critical segments of their citizenry." - International Labor Review