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Yes you can use a div inside a li and it will validate.
In HTML 4, the DIV element cannot be inside another block-level element, like a P element. However, in HTML5 the DIV element can be found inside and can contain other flow content elements, like P and DIV.
As all phrasing content is flow content, it means phrasing element can be used in all of flow content. The phrasing elements can only contain other phrasing elements, for example, you can't put div inside span.
Yes it is valid according to xhtml1-strict.dtd. The following XHTML passes the validation:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Test</title>
</head>
<body>
<ul>
<li><div>test</div></li>
</ul>
</body>
</html>
As an addendum: Before HTML 5 while a div inside a li is valid, a div inside a dl, dd, or dt is not!
If you look at xhtml1-strict.dtd, you'll see
<!ELEMENT li %Flow;>
<!ENTITY % Flow "(#PCDATA | %block; | form | %inline; | %misc;)*">
<!ENTITY % block
"p | %heading; | div | %lists; | %blocktext; | fieldset | table">
Thus div, p etc. can be inside li (according to XHTML 1.0 Strict DTD from w3.org).
If I recall correctly, a div inside a li used to be invalid.
@Flower @Superstringcheese Div should semantically define a section of a document, but it has already practically lost this role. Span should however contain text.
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