Rural-urban migration in China: a critical understanding of informality

Abstract

Over the past few decades, rural-urban (internal) migration has continued to make a major contribution to economic development and urbanisation in China. It has also raised debates about, and challenges to, public policy making, involving a series of social issues, including housing, health, education and employment, as a result of this unprecedented human movement. A specific question that has recently become a focus of concern is the large scale movement of rural residents to work in the city, as migrant workers do not usually have formal employment. Rather, their urban jobs are casual and shortterm. Furthermore, they obtain jobs through their interpersonal networks – ‘Guanxi’–without a formal contract. Hence, they are in a vulnerable position, being unable to protect long term positions through contract means, nor do they have social insurance and benefits that are legally required for workers. In recent years, the Chinese authorities have been focusing on producing effective policy interventions to tackle the issue of social protection for migrant workers. However, they face problems in implementing policy at the local level. For example, the implementation of formal labour contracts among migrant workers at the local level remains challenging. There is a suggestion that only state-owned enterprises and large multinational corporations will take the law seriously because of poor law enforcement upon small businesses (Liu 2010; Li and Freeman 2014). This chapter explores China’s rural-urban migration through a study of informal economic activities among migrant workers. Through a gender lens, this chapter critically examines the issue of informal economic activities among a group of male migrant workers in China from a cultural sociological perspective. In particular, the chapter documents their narratives of gendered family networks. While not distracting from the impact of the negative elements of informal employment among these workers in the private sector, the chapter provides a more comprehensive picture. Deploying a gender lens, the chapter addresses the role of informal, family-based social networks in male migrant workers’ identity formation, asan important resource in the process of learning to labour as a working class man. This has been under-researched. In turn, the chapter serves to highlight the challenges of social policy regarding informal employment within ruralurban migration. The chapter focuses on the rural men’s perspective on engaging with the neo-liberal modernising economy within the city. More specifically, the chapter argues that informal economic activities, such as the ‘Guanxi’ networks, are not just important in facilitating China’s economic growth, but that such a cultural practice is of particular importance for ruralurban migrant workers to negotiate their dislocated gender identities in the modernisation process. In particular, this chapter explores the implications of informal economic activities among migrant workers and the complexity of implementing regulation to reform the labour sector at the local level.