A Hunter researcher’s dissertation on migrant workers in Asia has won a prestigious prize from the American Political Science Association.
Assistant Professor of Political Science Zhihang Ruan won the best dissertation prize from APSA’s Class and Inequality.
Section for his dissertation “Land Regimes and the Welfare of Migrant Workers: A Comparison of China and Vietnam.”
The research traces the origins and evolution of land institutions and regulations on internal migrants in the two communist nations since the 1980s. Combining archival research, interviews, and participant observation, it finds that a seemingly minor divergence in land regulation in the early 1980s profoundly affected the capacity and incentives of the governments to provide welfare benefits to migrant laborers, shaping their contemporary economies.
“I am honored to receive this award and grateful for the recognition,” Ruan said. “It encourages me to refine my study and transform it into a book. It also inspires me to pursue further in-depth comparisons between China and Vietnam, an underexplored approach that holds great promise for deepening our understanding of transitional economies.”
Hunter Political Science Chair Zachary Shirkey praised Ruan’s research.
“It illuminates how long-standing laws on land ownership have had unintended effects on rates of inequality and the lives of rural-to-urban migrants in China and Vietnam today,” he said.
Ruan received his PhD from Northwestern University last year. His research interests include comparative political economy, international development, labor politics, and land institutions. For his dissertation, he conducted about a year and a half of fieldwork in China and Vietnam before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some findings of the study have been published in The China Quarterly.
Ruan has received awards from the Vietnam Studies Group of the Association of Asian Studies and was a Southeast Asia Research Group fellow. He is also a faculty fellow of the “China at CUNY” Initiative.
