Forging Citizenship in China’s Borderlands

This book offers a vivid and timely account of how belonging is made, contested, and lived in some of the most politically sensitive and socially dynamic regions of contemporary China. The volume reconceptualizes citizenship from the vantage point of China's borderlands and adjacent transnational spaces, where state power, mobility, ethnicity, religion, and everyday survival intersect. Bringing together a rich set of case studies, the book shows that citizenship is not simply a legal status granted by the state. It is also forged through daily negotiation: in schools, temples, markets, migration routes, welfare encounters, and security regimes. From local officials and religious actors to migrants, ethnic minorities, and border residents, the contributors reveal how people navigate shifting boundaries of inclusion and exclusion while responding to expanding state projects and transnational connections.

This volume is essential reading for students and scholars in Asian studies, anthropology, sociology, political science, geography, and migration studies. It will also appeal to policymakers, practitioners, and general readers interested in contemporary China, borderland dynamics, citizenship theory, ethnic relations, and the politics of belonging in an increasingly mobile and interconnected world.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Citizenship Studies.