Cultivating Farm Spaces: Pro-Rural Migrants and the Spatial Negotiation of Rural Belonging

Abstract

This study examines how pro-rural migrants in China reshape rural spaces by establishing ecological farms and their interactions with local villagers. We conceptualize farm spaces as socially constructed sites where differentiated spatial practices mediate rural integration and exclusion. Based on fieldwork in peri-urban Nanjing, we identified three types of farm spaces—exurban, ideal rural, and cosmopolitan—each generating distinct patterns of migrant–local relations. This study highlights how ecological farms operate both as economic ventures and as arenas of spatial negotiation, where power, class, and rural imaginaries are contested. By analyzing everyday interactions across social and spatial boundaries, this study contributes to the understanding of pro-rural migration amid counter-urbanization, critical debates on the rural incorporation of migrants in the era of increasing mobility, and spatial justice in contemporary China.

Keywords

pro-rural migrants everyday space ecological agriculture rural integration spatial production

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Aguayo

B. C.

Latta

(2018). Agro-ecology and food sovereignty movements in Chile: Sociospatial practices for alternative peasant futures. In Braun

(Ed.), Futures: Imagining socioecological transformation (pp. 173–182). Routledge.

Alcock

(2019). The new rural reconstruction movement: A Chinese degrowth style movement? Ecological Economics, 161, 261–269.

Altieri

M. A.

Toledo

V. M.

(2011). The agroecological revolution in Latin America: Rescuing nature, ensuring food sovereignty and empowering peasants. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38(3), 587–612.

Asikainen

McAreavey

(2025). “We are here our hearts are there”: Rurality, belonging and walking together. Sociologia Ruralis, 65(1), Article e12486.

Benson

O’Reilly

(2009). Migration and the search for a better way of life: A critical exploration of lifestyle migration. Sociological Review, 57(4), 608–625.

Berbary

L. A.

Boles

J. C.

(2014). Eight points for reflection: Revisiting scaffolding for improvisational humanist qualitative inquiry. Leisure Sciences, 36(5), 401–419.

Berg

N. G.

(2020). Geographies of wellbeing and place attachment: Revisiting urban–rural migrants. Journal of Rural Studies, 78, 438–446.

Berg-Nordlie

(2018). New in town: Small-town media discourses on immigrants and immigration. Journal of Rural Studies, 64, 210–219.

Carson

D. A.

Carson

D. B.

(2018). International lifestyle immigrants and their contributions to rural tourism innovation: Experiences from Sweden’s far North. Journal of Rural Studies, 64, 230–240.

10.

Chang

. (2023, February 17). The total number of people moving to the countryside to start businesses has reached 12.2 million. People’s Daily. https://www.chinanews.com.cn/gn/2023/02-17/9955175.shtml

11.

Chen

Zhang

Wang

(2024). Beyond displacement: The co-existence of newcomers and local residents in the process of rural tourism gentrification in China. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 32(1), 8–26.

12.

Clark

J. K.

McChesney

Munroe

D. K.

Irwin

E. G.

(2009). Spatial characteristics of exurban settlement pattern in the United States. Landscape and Urban Planning, 90(3–4), 178–188.

13.

Cody

(2014). Exemplary agriculture: The origins of independent organic farming in China. Student Anthropologist, 4(1), 18–30.

14.

Cody

(2019). ‘A new consciousness of the countryside’? Elite ruralism in contemporary China. Asian Anthropology, 18(1), 21–36.

15.

(2022). Holistic gentrification and the recreation of rurality: The new wave of rural gentrification in Chengdu, China. Journal of Rural Studies, 96, 237–245.

16.

Duplan

Cranston

(2023). Towards geographies of privileged migration: An intersectional perspective. Progress in Human Geography, 47(2), 333–347.

17.

Eimermann

(2015). Lifestyle migration to the North: Dutch families and the decision to move to rural Sweden. Population, Space and Place, 21(1), 68–85.

18.

Eimermann

Kordel

(2018). International lifestyle migrant entrepreneurs in two new immigration destinations: Understanding their evolving mix of embeddedness. Journal of Rural Studies, 64, 241–252.

19.

Flippen

C. A.

Farrell-Bryan

(2021). New destinations and the changing geography of immigrant incorporation. Annual Review of Sociology, 47(1), 479–500.

20.

Forrest Zhang

Donaldson

J. A

. (2010). From peasants to farmers: Peasant differentiation, labor regimes, and land-rights institutions in China’s agrarian transition. Politics & Society, 38(4), 458–489.

21.

Golding

S. A.

Winkler

R. L.

(2020). Tracking urbanization and exurbs: Migration across the rural–urban continuum, 1990–2016. Population Research and Policy Review, 39(5), 835–859.

22.

(2025). The 2025 report on youth moving to the countryside. https://ciug.sjtu.edu.cn/Web/Show?w=36&p=3&f=6640

23.

Halfacree

(2006). From dropping out to leading on? British counter-cultural back-to-the-land in a changing rurality. Progress in Humran Geography, 30(3), 309–336.

24.

Halfacree

(2007). Trial by space for a ‘radical rural’: Introducing alternative localities, representations and lives. Journal of Rural Studies, 23(2), 125–141.

25.

Halfacree

Rivera

M. J.

(2012). Moving to the countryside. . . and staying: Lives beyond representations. Sociologia Ruralis, 52(1), 92–114.

26.

Hayes

(2015). Moving south: The economic motives and structural context of North America’s emigrants in Cuenca, Ecuador. Mobilities, 10(2), 267–284.

27.

Johansen

(2008). Imagining the global and the rural: Rural cosmopolitanism in Sharon Butala’s the Garden of Eden and Amitav Ghosh’s the hungry Tide. Postcolonial Text, 4(3), 1–18.

28.

Jover

Díaz-Parra

(2023). Who is the city for? Overtourism, lifestyle migration and social sustainability. In Choe

Lugosi

(Eds.), Migration, tourism and social sustainability (pp. 9–32). Routledge.

29.

Kordel

Pohle

(2018). International lifestyle migration in the Andes of Ecuador: How migrants from the USA perform privilege, import rurality and evaluate their impact on local community. Sociologia Ruralis, 58(1), 126–146.

30.

Krivokapic-Skoko

Reid

Collins

(2018). Rural cosmopolitism in Australia. Journal of Rural Studies, 64, 153–163.

31.

Lefebvre

(1991). [1974]. The production of space. Blackwell.

32.

Zhang

Long

(2024). Understanding rural gentrification in China: Examining the evolving concept and comparative insights. Journal of Rural Studies, 108, Article 103301.

33.

MacKrell

Pemberton

(2018). New representations of rural space: Eastern European migrants and the denial of poverty and deprivation in the English countryside. Journal of Rural Studies, 59, 49–57.

34.

Mahon

(2007). New populations; shifting expectations: The changing experience of Irish rural space and place. Journal of Rural Studies, 23(3), 345–356.

35.

McAreavey

(2012). Resistance or resilience? Tracking the pathway of recent arrivals to a “new” rural destination. Sociologia Ruralis, 52(4), 488–507.

36.

McAreavey

Argent

(2018a). Migrant integration in rural new immigration destinations: An institutional and triangular perspective. Journal of Rural Studies, 64, 267–275.

37.

McAreavey

Argent

(2018b). New immigration destinations (NID) unravelling the challenges and opportunities for migrants and for host communities. Journal of Rural Studies, 64, 148–152.

38.

Morén-Alegret

Milazzo

Romagosa

Kallis

(2021). “Cosmovillagers” as sustainable rural development actors in Mountain Hamlets? International immigrant entrepreneurs’ perceptions of sustainability in the Lleida Pyrenees (Catalonia, Spain). European Countryside, 13(2), 267–296.

39.

Osbaldiston

Picken

Denny

(2020). Exploring emotional reflexivity in British lifestyle migration to Australia. Population, Space and Place, 26(5), Article e2328.

40.

Patton

M. Q.

(1990). Qualitative evaluation and research methods. SAGE.

41.

Phillips

Smith

D. P.

(2018). Comparative ruralism and “opening new windows” on gentrification. Dialogues in Human Geography, 8(1), 51–58.

42.

(2024). Ecological agriculture and rural revitalization: Toward a post-productivist countryside in Nanjing, China. Ecology and Society, 29(3), Article 290324.

43.

Scott

(2021). Can we be more collaborative? Top-down policies and urban–rural divides in the ecological agriculture sector in Nanjing, China. Society & Natural Resources, 34(2), 208–226.

44.

Robins

(2019). Lifestyle migration from the Global South to the Global North: Individualism, social class, and freedom in a centre of “superdiversity.” Population, Space and Place, 25(6), Article e2236.

45.

Rodes

Rodríguez

(2021). Social integration and multilocality: A multivariate study on lifestyle migration. Journal of International Migration and Integration, 22(2), 529–551.

46.

Rosset

P. M.

Machín Sosa

Roque Jaime

A. M.

Ávila Lozano

D. R.

(2011). The Campesino-to-Campesino agroecology movement of ANAP in Cuba: Social process methodology in the construction of sustainable peasant agriculture and food sovereignty. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 38(1), 161–191.

47.

Rye

J. F.

(2006). Rural youths’ images of the rural. Journal of Rural Studies, 22(4), 409–421.

48.

Sanders

(2006). A market road to sustainable agriculture? Ecological agriculture, green food and organic agriculture in China. Development and Change, 37(1), 201–226.

49.

Sandström

(2023). Resurgent back-to-the-land and the cultivation of a renewed countryside. Sociologia Ruralis, 63(3), 544–563.

50.

Scott

Schumilas

Chen

(2014). Contradictions in state-and civil society-driven developments in China’s ecological agriculture sector. Food Policy, 45, 158–166.

51.

Schumilas

Chen

Fuller

Scott

(2020). What makes a CSA a CSA? A framework for comparing community supported agriculture with cases of Canada and China. Canadian Food Studies/la Revue Canadienne des Études Sur l’Alimentation, 7(1), 64–87.

52.

Schumilas

Scott

(2015). Characterizing alternative food networks in China. Agriculture and Human Values, 32(2), 299–313.

53.

Scott

(2016). The convergence of alternative food networks within “rural development” initiatives: The case of the New Rural Reconstruction Movement in China. Local Environment, 21(9), 1082–1099.

54.

Stenbacka

(2023). Integration and rural space in Sweden: A three-dimensional approach. In Rauhut

(Ed.), New methods and theory on immigrant integration (pp. 33–50). Edward Elgar.

55.

Stockdale

(2016). Contemporary and “messy” rural in-migration processes: Comparing counterurban and lateral rural migration. Population, Space and Place, 22(6), 599–616.

56.

Sutherland

L. A.

(2021). Horsification: Embodied gentrification in rural landscapes. Geoforum, 126, 37–47.

57.

Torkington

(2012). Place and lifestyle migration: The discursive construction of “glocal” place-identity. Mobilities, 7(1), 71–92.

58.

Torres

R. M.

Popke

E. J.

Hapke

H. M.

(2006). The South’s silent bargain: Rural restructuring, Latino labor and the ambiguities of migrant experience. In Furuseth

Smith

(Eds.), Latinos in the new south: Transformations of place (pp. 37–67). Ashgate Press.

59.

Van Noorloos

Steel

. (2016). Lifestyle migration and socio-spatial segregation in the urban (izing) landscapes of Cuenca (Ecuador) and Guanacaste (Costa Rica). Habitat International, 54, 50–57.

60.

Vercoe

R. A.

Welch-Devine

Hardy

Demoss

J. A.

Bonney

S. N.

Allen

. . . Van Sant

(2014). Acknowledging trade-offs and understanding complexity: Exurbanization issues in Macon County, North Carolina. Ecology and Society, 19(1), Article 190123.

61.

Vuin

Carson

D. A.

Carson

D. B.

Garrett

(2016). The role of heritage tourism in attracting “active” in-migrants to “low amenity” rural areas. Rural Society, 25(2), 134–153.

62.

Walker

Fortmann

(2003). Whose landscape? A political ecology of the “exurban” Sierra. Cultural Geographies, 10(4), 469–491.

63.

Wang

C. M.

(2023). Escape to the countryside: Affects and rural eventful atmospheres. Habitat International, 140, Article 102929.

64.

Wilbur

(2013). Growing a radical ruralism: Back-to-the-land as practice and ideal. Geography Compass, 7(2), 149–160.

65.

Winkler

R. L.

Matarrita-Cascante

(2020). Exporting consumption: Lifestyle migration and energy use. Global Environmental Change, 61, Article 102026.

66.

Woods

(2018). Precarious rural cosmopolitanism: Negotiating globalization, migration and diversity in Irish small towns. Journal of Rural Studies, 64, 164–176.

67.

Xie

(2021). New farmer identity: The emergence of a post-productivist agricultural regime in China. Sociologia Ruralis, 61(1), 52–73.

68.

Yang

X. S.

(2022). Producing an ideal village: Imagined rurality, tourism and rural gentrification in China. Journal of Rural Studies, 96, 1–10.

69.

Gao

Johnson

(2020). The lost countryside: Spatial production of rural culture in Tangwan village in Shanghai. Habitat International, 98, Article 102137.

70.

(2015). Land transfer and the pursuit of agricultural modernization in China. Journal of Agrarian Change, 15(3), 314–337.

71.

Wang

(2024). The emergence of counter-urbanisation in China: Can it be a pathway for rural revitalisation? Habitat International, 144, Article 102998.

72.

Zollet

(2024). Revitalising rural areas through counterurbanisation: Community-oriented policies for the settlement of urban newcomers. Habitat International, 145, Article 103022.