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British Journal of Criminology Advance Access originally published online on May 20, 2009
British Journal of Criminology 2009 49(4):491-512; doi:10.1093/bjc/azp024
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The British Journal of Criminology 49:491-512 (2009)
© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD). All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

The Robbery of Motorcycle Taxi Drivers (Dake Zai) in China

A Lifestyle/Routine Activity Perspective and Beyond

Jianhua Xu*

* Fulbright Visiting Scholar (2008–09), Department of Criminology, The University of Pennsylvania, and Ph.D. candidate, Department of Sociology, The University of Hong Kong. Address: 483 McNeil Building, 3718 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA; xjianhua{at}sas.upenn.edu.


  Abstract

Using official police records, interviews with motorcycle taxi drivers and the participant observation of their working activities in Tianzhi city, China, this paper examines how and why a dimension of social stratification—household registration (hukou)—is related to the risk of robbery victimization and attempts to evaluate the effectiveness of applying lifestyle/routine activity theory to contemporary urban China. It discloses that migrant motorcycle taxi drivers are highly overrepresented in robbery victimization. Their night-time working practices enhance their chances of being robbed by both increasing exposure to likely offenders and reducing the presence of capable guardians. The study further explores how a structural factor—motorcycle ban policy—shapes different routine activities between migrant and resident motorcycle taxi drivers and, by extension, differential risks of robbery victimization. The paper concludes by pointing out the importance of locating lifestyle/routine activities in a larger Chinese macro-social structural context. The outcome is one of the very first ethnographic analyses of crime conducted in situ in China.


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