On March 28, Prof. Adrian Favell and Dr. SUN Li from the University of Leeds, visited SPA-SCUT and gave an academic report themed "The migration and regional governance of Europe and China's urban"

Prof. Adrian Favell’s report explores the relevance of European-Chinese comparison in migration and regional studies, taking the European Union and China as the regional units of comparison. The European Union is a unique governance experiment in the free movement of persons, enabling citizens of member states as EU citizen to live, work, study, and retire freely across national borders, as well as claim certain key welfare rights as non-national residents. A key part of this legal framework has been the application of a principle of non-discrimination by nationality – whose successful application varies according to the varieties of capitalism present in Europe. Economically, the policies have benefitted major cities (such as London) at the expense of peripheral regions less integrated into the international economy, and more liberal economies (such as the UK). With Brexit, and the withdrawal of the UK from the EU, the EU may move to a system closer to the Chinese Hukou system where mobility and welfare rights remain attached, and/or migration is controlled by the state. In this light, China can be seen as moving slowly towards a more efficient distribution of population through facilitating regional to urban popular migrations, which necessarily may involve adopting some similar principles of rights and non-discrimination for newcomers. In practice, this varies by city and region. It is worthwhile to consider what can be mutually learned from the comparison of these two regional political economies of labour migration.

After that, Dr. SUN Li introduced the general information of the University of Leeds, including the environment of the city, the organization of the school and the basic facts of the School of Sociology and Social Policy. She also expressed her desire to cooperate with our school and hope that the two parties will strengthen the partnership and in-depth communication in short-term visiting program, teacher training, joint research, etc.