Qinghai’s subnational ‘emigration state’: noodlemaking, out-migration and the politics of development in northwest China

This article extends debates over the ‘emigration state’ by examining a case of internal labour export in north-west China. While migration scholars have conceptualised emigration states as national governments that promote international out-migration for development, little attention has been paid to subnational governments facilitating internal migration for similar purposes. Drawing on multi-sited qualitative fieldwork in Qinghai province and Shanghai, we show how local authorities in poor Muslim minority counties have actively trained, financed and mobilised Hui and Salar residents to establish noodle restaurants in eastern China, generating remittances that underpin county-level economies. We argue that Qinghai’s ‘subnational emigration state’ parallels international cases in its brokerage and liaison functions, migrant targeting and reliance on remittance-led development, but operates through distinctive internal mechanisms: county finance, cadre mobilisation, ethnic-sectoral targeting, negotiated informality and paradoxical emphasis on permanent out-migration rather than sustainable local livelihoods. Our findings bridge internal and international migration studies by demonstrating that state-brokered labour export, whether across or within borders, generates similar dilemmas of dependency, informality and uneven development, even when the mechanisms differ. Our study thus contributes to a comparative research agenda that incorporates subnational and internal cases into broader debates on migration, statecraft and development.