Protecting Mobile Livelihoods: Actors’ Responses to the Emerging Health Challenges in Beijing and Tianjin

Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Beijing and Tianjin, and applying a livelihood framework combined with a well-being perspective, this article examines an important aspect of rural–urban migrants’ social protection in China, namely migrants’ health, in particular work safety and occupational health. It argues that migrant workers’ social rights to health and livelihoods are a fiercely contested domain of citizenship entailing aspects of exclusion, inclusion, and control and allocation of economic, social, and political resources. The article shows that in spite of the accelerated pace of legislation and consolidated efforts to reconstruct the welfare system in China in recent years, the new social security schemes have thus far, by and large, failed to protect migrant workers in a systematic manner. The issues raised in the article therefore call for greater academic attention and more effective public policy responses.