G8
Zeitschrift für Ethnologie 138 (2013)
of Tengri Tagh/Tianshan Mountains and who in the last decade began flowing in large
numbers into southern Xinjiang. The main migrant workers’ destinations in the south
are the oil fields of the Taklamakan Desert and other extraction sites in the Tarım Ba-
sin, the cotton fields of Aqgsu and Kashgar, road and railway construction sites, and
various construction projects in urban areas. Most of these ventures are run by eastern
Chinese companies. Favorable tax policies and low land prices attract state-owned and
private enterprises from eastern China to set up factories and open new extraction sites
in Xinjiang. Collected between 2011 and 2012, my observations in northern and
southern Xinjiang prove that the workers employed in these factories and construction
sites are overwhelmingly Han.“* Workers arrive in the region in organized groups re-
cruited from their home provinces, or they migrate individually, having gathered in-
formation about available jobs through native place networks. It appears that contem-
porary workers and entrepreneurs are encouraged to migrate either by the friends and
family members who came before them; or by media reports in their home provinces.
These reports represent Xinjiang as the land of opportunity where, as the popular say-
ing has it, “money can be easily earned” (zai Xinjiang qian haozheng).
Most of the post-1980s migration to XinjJiang, including the skilled personnel I dis-
cussed above, appears driven by the search of economic profit. It also seems to be pre-
dominantly organized by individuals, and mostly voluntary. At the same time, however,
this does not mean it is not political, centrally-planned and centrally- and locally-en-
couraged. The central and local governments have successfully created the favorable
conditions necessary to attract Chinese companies to establish factories in Xinjiang.
This, in turn, attracts workers to those regions where factories are constructed. Settle-
ment in agricultural areas is also encouraged by favorable responsibility contracts (Bec-
quelin 2000:76). However, the outcomes of these strategies are far from coherent, and
migrants make use of state schemes in ways that do not always correspond with the
government’s expectations. For instance, although the government encourages immi-
gration that should presumably result in long-term settlement, as well as the immigra-
tion of skilled personnel, most contemporary migrants are in fact peasant workers and
entrepreneurs who come to Xinjiang temporarily or seasonally. As a result, while Han
migration to Xinjiang has increased dramatically over the past decade, the actual num-
ber of Han settlers, that is, Han who transferred their hukou to Xinjiang, has decreased
percentage-wise from 40.57 % to 40.48 % between 2000 and 2010 (Toops 2013).
Seen in this light, current state strategies produce relatively few Han settlers but
many short- and long-term migrants. Even migrants who have lived in Xinjiang for as
?1 Beller-Hann (2002:65) reports that Uyghur who lived in southern Xinjiang in 1995 resented the
fact that even unskilled jobs in the profitable oil sector were offered to migrant Han. Hopper and
Webber (2009) similarly demonstrate that the Han nearly monopolized the most profitable construc-
tion sector (with the help of native-place networks). This has significantly contributed to the current
income inequality between the Han and Uyghur.
