2021 Volume 86 Issue 781 Pages 925-935
In China, nationwide collective relocation projects for poverty alleviation have brought about a significant restructuring of rural life. Social integration is regarded as a relocation project’s success symbol. This paper studies double-directional social integration between two resident groups, namely the local group and the re-settler group, in the village-to-village collective relocation projects, which have barely been discussed prior to this. Based on typology analysis in terms of residential segregation, four types of resettlement were recognized. Type 1, centralized type, the re-settlers and locals are balanced (40%-60% of total) in population and land, an intensive resettlement cluster is centralized and surrounded by several local clusters. Type 2, adjacent type, the re-settlers have a smaller (20%-40%) population and land than the locals, they reside beside the local area adjacently, merging as one big aggregation. Type3, enclave type, the re-settlers have an extremely minority (0-20%) population and land than the locals, the re-settlers live in an enclave, which is far away from the local clusters. Type 4, infill type, the re-settlers have a smaller (20%-40%) population and land use area than the locals, and they live in a dispersal layout across multiple small-sized clusters through filling the blank spaces between the existing local clusters.
Based on Schnell and Yoav’s proposed socio-spatial isolation indices, the evaluation was carried out in each of the four typical villages in Shiyan city, Hubei Province, China. The evaluation was mainly made up of two parts: social isolation (SO) and spatial isolation (SP). SO inflects a personal social interaction network through various activities, and it is the direct indicator of social integration/isolation; while SP described the demographic and physical conditions in different territories. Through the SO and SP comparisons in four villages and two groups, we found SP one of the crucial influential factors for SO. Centralized and infilled types were found more likely to promote integration socially and spatially; therefore, these two are highly recommended. Adjacent type is the most frequently adopted, assumingly due to its clear superiority to the other types in terms of straightforwardness and cost-effectiveness, as well as its mid-level performance in promoting integration. Enclave type is improbable for integration and should be avoided as much as possible and used only when there are hard-to-solve problems and limitations.
