The formation of “Zhejiang Village,” a migrant community in Beijing, is the subject of this article. Based on years of fieldwork in the community, the author elaborates on the concept of xi or relations cluster, i.e., social networks revolving around a key person who organizes the different relations, as the constitutive unit of Zhejiang Village. The characteristics of xi, the relations that it forges among its members, the nature of migrant community that derives from it and its contributions to the conceptualization of social networks are discussed in the article.
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