5 - Playing with Institutional Leeway

Summary

Although rural migrants are frequently deflected and only selectively incorporated into urban public benefits, they have ways to undercut elements of social control and attain some education and health care. Resourcefulness and practical priorities help them find bureaucrats who practice co-migrant empathy and work within existing formal institutions to pry open what institutional leeway they can. When those are insufficient or inaccessible, they create and turn to private alternatives to get health care and education in the city. “People-run” schools are informal institutions that fill the gaps of public service provision, enabling migrants to keep their jobs when they get sick or have families in their destinations. However, because they are makeshift and typically operate on the outskirts of cities and in the shadows of legality, they can become subject to sudden intervention or regulation by the state. At other times, the government allows them to operate. The subversion of control is possible but not without the risk of being reverted into a target of the state.