This thesis examines the lives of a group of forced migrants who were resettled in Dragon Village, Chen City, Hunan in the national Three Gorges Hydropower Project on Yangtze River undertaken at the turn of the twenty-first century in inland China. It aims to reveal how their collective identity as “Three Gorges Migrants” has been constructed by the state, the local governments and the host society of the resettling region. It argues that the concept and images of this collective identity were the result of social construction. The state invented it and presented the people it referred to as heroes who sacrificed their homeland for the national project, which, however, went against the truth that the settlers had never been given any alternative. The local governments at the beg...[ Read more ]

This thesis examines the lives of a group of forced migrants who were resettled in Dragon Village, Chen City, Hunan in the national Three Gorges Hydropower Project on Yangtze River undertaken at the turn of the twenty-first century in inland China. It aims to reveal how their collective identity as “Three Gorges Migrants” has been constructed by the state, the local governments and the host society of the resettling region. It argues that the concept and images of this collective identity were the result of social construction. The state invented it and presented the people it referred to as heroes who sacrificed their homeland for the national project, which, however, went against the truth that the settlers had never been given any alternative. The local governments at the beginning organized an exaggerated welcome for the settlers but then turned a deaf ear to the migrants’ affairs and finally degraded the migrant village as the toughest one disturbing social order through organizing protests. In this process, the local governments built up the image of the settlers as too greedy and pugnacious to deal with. The host society changed their opinions about the settlers from regarding them as privileged and greedy people to emphasizing their distinctiveness so as to draw a line between themselves and the settlers. This thesis also investigates the change of the settlers’ attitudes towards their given collective identity: from viewing it as a weapon to fight for their own interests, to an imposed one which urges the settlers to change its images. By looking into the construction process of this collective identity, this thesis examines the relationship between the state slogan and identity formation of ordinary people, and reveals the internal complexity and fluidity of the settlers’ identities.