Abstract: Positive welfare system is the institutionalized guarantee of people’s well-being. Human risk caused by the spatial turn of mining migrants — an important part of project-affected migrants - is an unavoidable practical problem. We observed the mining migration in E Banner of Inner Mongolia. The migrants were provided with plentiful cash welfare, but what is missing is the reflection on building a positive welfare system that clarifies the rights and responsibilities of all parties, improves its ability, and develops people’s risk awareness. By presenting how mining migrants faced the change from traditional to modern life and production in the social transformation, this article examines multiple dilemmas of risk faced by mining migrants because of all parties’ unclear rights and responsibilities, ineffective moral mechanism, individual autonomy’s purposeless needs and lack of reflective ability. As a coupling strategy to mitigate the risk of mining migration, building a positive welfare system is all about the interaction between mining migrants and the government, enterprises and social organizations. This article explores the possibility of building a multi-dimensional positive welfare system that helps the migrants swift from receiving help to self-help. The system will balance rights and responsibilities, cultivate solidarity and cooperation, and transform exclusion to inclusion. This will be a reasonable attempt to help mining migrants cope with real risks and build a sustainable future life.

Key words: mining migration, risk society, positive welfare, capability rebuilding