Staff profile

Gosia Jakimów is an assistant professor in the East Asian Politics at School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University. She joined the SGIA department in 2018 after holding a lecturer post at University of Sheffield. She was awarded her PhD in 2015 from University of Manchester. Her research focuses on the question of citizenship and civil society in China, critical citizenship theory, transnational civil society, political economy of labour in China, and the normative element of EU-China relations, with special interest in the role of Belt and Road Initiative in normative changes in Central-Eastern Europe. Her research in citizenship studies is based on ethnographic fieldwork in China conducted among migrant worker NGOs, international NGOs and international organisations, such as UNDP and EU. In 2014, she received European Union funding to take 1 year-long post as a visiting scholar at the School of Government, Peking University. She is a member of an international network of Chinese and Western scholars focusing on a question of citizenship in China, based at the Sun-Yat Sen University in Guangzhou.

Dr Jakimów invites prospective PhD students to contact her if they wish to conduct research in one or more of the research interests areas listed below.

• BRICS and globalisation
• Citizenship, civil society and social movements in China
• Internal migration in China
• Critical theories of citizenship
• Labour politics in comparative perspective
• Transnational civil society
• Urban exclusion and global cities formation dynamics
• Belt and Road Initiative
• EU-China relations
• Normative Power and Norms-Diffusion in IR

Authored book

• Jakimów, M. China's citizenship challenge: Labour NGOs and the struggle for migrant workers' rights. Manchester University Press

Chapter in book

• Jakimów, M. (2021). Migrant workers' citizenship positionality in contemporary China. In Z. Guo (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Chinese Citizenship. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003225843
• Jakimów, M., & Barabantseva, E. (2016). ‘Othering’ in the Construction of Chinese Citizenship. In L. König, & B. Chaudhuri (Eds.), Politics of the 'other' in India and China : western concepts in non-western contexts. Routledge
• Jakimów, M. (2015). Understanding Citizenship Beyond the Hukou System: the Role of Migrant Worker NGOs in Transformation of Citizenship in China. In Z. Guo, & S. Guo (Eds.), Theorizing Chinese citizenship (111-132). Lexington Books

Journal Article

• Hayward, J., & Jakimów, M. (2022). Who Makes the City? Beijing’s Urban Villages as Sites of Ideological Contestation. positions: asia critique, 30(3), 455-477. https://doi.org/10.1215/10679847-9723672
• Jakimów, M. (2022). Activist citizenship in non-Western and non-democratic contexts: how to define ‘acts of citizenship’. Citizenship Studies, 26(4-5), 505-511. https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2022.2091232
• Jakimów, M. (2019). Desecuritisation as a Soft Power Strategy: the Belt and Road Initiative, European Fragmentation and China’s Normative Influence in Central-Eastern Europe. Asia Europe Journal: Studies on Common Policy Challenges, 17(4), 369-385. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10308-019-00561-3
• Jakimów, M. (2017). Resistance through Accommodation: A Citizenship Approach to Migrant Worker NGOs in China. Journal of Contemporary China, 26(108), 915-930. https://doi.org/10.1080/10670564.2017.1337316
• Jakimów, M. (2012). Chinese citizenship ‘after orientalism’: academic narratives on internal migrants in China. Citizenship Studies, 16(5-6), 657-671. https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2012.698488