Migrant Workers In Urban China Research Articles

Who earns more? City hierarchy of earning returns to education among migrant workers in urban China

According to urban economic theories, workers in more developed regions should have higher educational returns. However, studies on urban workers in China have shown mixed results on whether earning returns to education are higher in regions experiencing more economic growth. Meanwhile, there is a lack of evidence on this issue among migrant populations, which have rapidly increased in number during China's economic transition. To fill this void, this study investigated how educational returns among migrant workers are related to local economic development levels and industrial structures. Specifically, we used individual-level data obtained from 286 cities through the 2018 China Migrants Dynamic Survey and city-level data to conduct a multilevel linear regression analysis with random slopes. We thus found that earning returns to education were higher in cities under two conditions, including higher development and higher shares of tertiary industry. Moreover, this association was more pronounced among high-skill migrant workers than low-skill ones. As higher income is a primary driving force in migration, we suggest that future policies should further promote industrial restructuring rather than using discriminative administrative rules to guide migration flows.

Village Governance of Migrant Farmers: Evidence from a Case Study in Rural China

This article aims to uncover an important yet under-researched governance field during the massive wave of internal migration in China. In contrast with abundant studies that explore the governmentality of migrant workers in urban China, rare scholar attention is dedicated to the group of migrant farmers who only move within rural China. Drawing on a detailed analysis of governance dynamics of Lianhua village, Hunan province, this study finds that migrant famers could undermine village governance in the place of destination from three dimensions: by disturbing social orders; overpricing or exploiting farmland; and paralyzing operation of village affairs. The critical factor deciding whether migrant farmers commit such acts is the degree of their spontaneous solidarity. This study also finds that implementing collective management among migrant farmers in a neoliberal manner could help address village governance challenges brought by them but is not conducive to their social integration into the hosting societies.

Anatomy of the Wage Gap between Local and Migrant Workers in Urban China: New Evidence from Matched Data

Anatomy of the Wage Gap between Local and Migrant Workers in Urban China: New Evidence from Matched Data

Labour market performance of young migrant workers with heterogeneous educational trajectories in China

Successful global cities present a spectrum of development strategies but share the benefit of the reciprocal dynamics between tailored education systems and matching labour markets. This paper examines burgeoning cities in China and investigates the effects of the heterogeneous educational trajectories of young migrant workers in urban China on their labour market performance. Drawing on the National Migrant Dynamics Monitoring Survey, this paper finds striking wage variations among the young migrant population. Migrant workers who attended high schools in current receiving cities earned less than their counterparts who received senior-secondary education elsewhere. Students following the academic track were better off than students following the vocational track. To further explore what has prevented the urban labour market from rewarding migrants who studied in a receiving city, where the education system is expected to better cater to the city’s specific industrial needs, we tested and found evidence of the mediating effects of job industry and occupation. In addition to engaging with empirical debates in the field, this paper develops a theoretical framework to model how the qualitative attributes of an education system affect wage variations among migrant workers.

The Labor Contract Law and the economic integration of rural migrants in urban China

This study examines the income determinants of rural migrants versus urban residents in the urban labor market of China during the 2008 Labor Contract Law era. We focus on the effects of employment contracts, enterprise ownership and social networks on income using data from the 2009 Rural-Urban Migration in China survey and applying ordinary least squares regression and propensity score matching analyses. The results showed that urban residents were more advantaged with guaranteed respectable job earnings, stable employment contracts and involvement in state-owned enterprises and public organizations compared to rural migrants. Rural migrants earned much less than their urban counterparts across ownership sectors. Although rural migrants benefited from urban networks, social exclusion impeded their accumulation of urban ties. Despite the Chinese Government’s call in recent years to fully support the citizenization of rural migrants by revising the Labor Contract Law and reforming the household registration ( hukou) system, the study showed that the integration of rural migrant workers in urban China has a long way to go.

Ritualistic Institution and Livelihood Fragility of Female Migrant Workers in Urban China.

China’s rapid urbanization can be attributed, in part, to the contribution of female migrant workers. However, they are a socially vulnerable group. In order to explore the vulnerability of female migrant workers and its reasons, questionnaires and in-depth interviews were conducted with female migrant workers in Guangdong and Hubei provinces, China, and 992 questionnaires and 147 interview data were finally collected as the research object. The descriptive statistical analysis was conducted with the quantitative data to reveal the livelihood vulnerability of female migrant workers and its reasons, and qualitative data were used to corroborate and consolidate the argument. “Ritualistic institution” is the key to understanding the livelihood fragility of female migrant workers. The policy on migrant workers has weakened the concept of family, making it difficult for families, which are on the fringes of the national policy vision, to benefit from the system. Therefore, the livelihood costs of female migrant workers have increased. Traditional gender norms also make it difficult for migrant women to enjoy the limited benefits and resources of the policy. This weakens the authoritative role of the policy in solving the problem of livelihood vulnerability for migrant workers, particularly women. This shows that China’s policy on migrant workers is somewhat symbolic. Through “family separation” and “ritualistic institution”, it can be seen that China’s urbanization is a modern development activity that carries urban bias and lacks humanistic care value. This is bound to result in the neglect of human development, gender differences, and family, making it difficult for rural migrant women to survive. This in-depth study seeks to find solutions to the problems prevalent under the cover of contemporary Chinese modernity.

Embracing city life: physical activities and the social integration of the new generation of female migrant workers in urban China

ABSTRACT Drawing on empirical data from interviews with young Chinese female rural–urban migrant workers in the Pearl River Delta of China’s Guangdong province, this article explores the ways in which physical activities help to fulfil the ‘urban dream’ of this new generation of female migrant workers and promote their social integration. The article demonstrates that physical activities exert their influence and facilitate the young female migrant workers’ social integration into cities through four dimensions: ‘space’, ‘network’, ‘identity’ and ‘image’. Participating in sport and exercise expands the scale of workers’ living spaces and contributes to building social networks and self-identification. It also enhances female migrant workers’ individualistic values, as opposed to family-oriented ones. These new values allow them to enjoy recreational life and to change the stereotypical image of rural–urban migrant workers.

Consumer behavior of rural migrant workers in urban China

In Chinese cities, rural migrant workers are usually considered consumers with the lowest purchasing power. Nevertheless, the younger generation of rural migrants, who are considerably better educated and higher paid than their predecessors, form a growing group of able consumers. The increased consumption demand and capacity of rural migrants have started to transform the commercial landscape of Chinese cities, potentially contributing to the country's transition towards a consumption-driven economy. Based on a 2012 survey in Jiangsu Province, this paper identifies four distinct consumer types among young rural migrant workers: conservative, balanced, frustrated and adventurous. Their different consumption behaviors are shaped not only by their financial capacities, but also by their family responsibilities and acculturation attitudes in the city. Despite the similar constraints faced by all young rural migrant workers, some are more eager to develop an urban lifestyle and identity through imitating the consumer behavior of urban natives, while others largely retain rural customs and habits, which are shared by older generation migrant workers. The findings point to the impact of social and institutional barriers on rural migrants' consumption in light of increased social inequality amid China's urban transition.

Regional Heterogeneity of Migrant Rent Affordability Stress in Urban China: A Comparison between Skilled and Unskilled Migrants at Prefecture Level and Above

Rental housing unaffordability has been widely used to assess the housing poverty problem among immigrants in the developed and developing countries. China is experiencing an unprecedented urbanization process, with two-thirds of its 250 million migrants now being sheltered in private rental housing in the host cities. In this paper, we aimed to examine the rental housing unaffordability problems faced by migrant workers in urban China and provide policy recommendations for a more accessible and affordable migrant housing provision system. We used the household data on China’s Migrant Dynamics Monitoring Survey (MDMS), released in 2016, across China’s 329 prefecture-level cities and above to look into the sociality and spatiality of migrant rent expenses and rent-income ratio at the prefecture-level cities and above. The statistical tests were conducted to examine the socio- and spatial-variance of these rent stress indexes, and it was found that educational level is a significant and quite powerful indicator in predicting who will or will not assume the heavier rental housing pressure. We then continued to reveal the different spatiality of high-rent-stress migrants across the high- and low-skilled categories. An agglomeration of the high-skilled high-rent-stress migrants was witnessed in the coastal growth engines of urban clusters, while a more spillover-like pattern among the low-skilled high-rent-stress migrants was reported in our study. An ordinary least square and spatial regression analysis was conducted to explain their respective mechanisms.

Life Satisfaction of Rural Migrant Workers in Urban China: The Roles of Community Service Participation and Identity Integration

China is home to approximately 245 million rural-to-urban migrant workers. The influx of migrants into urban areas has posed various challenges for local social service systems. Recently, increasing number of community services have been developed to meet the growing service demands from the migrant population. However, whether increase in community service use results in improved wellbeing among migrant workers remains critically unexplored. As such, this study examines the role of community service use in migrant workers’ life satisfaction and the potential mediating effect of identity integration in Shenzhen, China. Bootstrapped models were adopted to examine relationship among variables. Drawing from a sample of 1,087 rural-to-urban migrant workers, we found that community service use is positively correlated with both identity integration and migrant workers’ life satisfaction. Moreover, identity integration served as a partial mediator between community service use and life satisfaction. The mediating effect of identity integration was found to increase with age. This study highlights that diverse services should be implemented to address divergent needs of migrants in different age groups. Community service can also serve as a vehicle to foster integration among migrant workers in host communities, especially for older age groups. Future studies may further investigate the relationships between community social capital, community social support, quality of community-based organization and frequency of service use so as to optimize the life satisfaction of migrant workers.

Migrants on exhibition: The emergence of migrant worker museums in China as a neoliberal experiment on governance

ABSTRACTThis article develops a critical investigation of the recent emergence of migrant worker museums (MWMs) in Chinese cities. Though studies on migrant workers in urban China have examined in detail the state and popular discourses that construct migrants as uncivilized and inferior, limited attention has been dedicated to a more recent line of discursive formulation, which idealizes and romanticizes migrant workers as docile, hard-working subjects making laudable contribution to the development of postreform urban China. The MWMs are built in accord with such new discourses. With a detailed analysis of the MWMs in Shenzhen and Guangzhou, this article argues that MWMs depoliticize both the domains of labor and everyday life and render invisible exploitative labor relations by eulogizing migrant labor; advocating enterprising, self-reliant migrant subjects; and praising the generous care of the state. Hence, though the MWMs contribute to reversing the negative stereotypes of migrant workers, they can nonetheless be theorized as a neoliberal experiment on the governance of people and labor.

New Trends in Internal Migration in China: Profiles of the New‐generation Migrants

AbstractThree decades since the first wave of rural–urban migration, the new generation of migrant workers has become the main force of internal migration in China. The present paper comprehensively explores the profiles of the new generation of migrant workers in urban China. We find that the “new generation” migrants are more educated and skilled, and are likely to work in manufacturing and service industries than in the construction industry. Moreover, they tend to allocate more time to non‐farm activities and have more months away from home per year in urban areas. In contrast to their predecessors, they tend to migrate to urban areas with their spouses, consume more in urban areas and send less money back home. Our findings suggest that the differences in features between the new generation of rural migrants and urban residents have become smaller and the integration of rural migrants into urban China has taken place gradually.

Should the poor have no medicines to cure? A study on the association between social class and social security among the rural migrant workers in urban China

BackgroundThe rampant urbanization and medical marketization in China have resulted in increased vulnerabilities to health and socioeconomic disparities among the rural migrant workers in urban China. In the Chinese context, the socioeconomic characteristics of rural migrant workers have attracted considerable research attention in the recent past years. However, to date, no previous studies have explored the association between the socioeconomic factors and social security among the rural migrant workers in urban China. This study aims to explore the association between socioeconomic inequity and social security inequity and the subsequent associations with medical inequity and reimbursement rejection.MethodsData from a regionally representative sample of 2009 Survey of Migrant Workers in Pearl River Delta in China were used for analyses. Multiple logistic regressions were used to analyze the impacts of socioeconomic factors on the eight dimensions of social security (sick pay, paid leave, maternity pay, medical insurance, pension insurance, occupational injury insurance, unemployment insurance, and maternity insurance) and the impacts of social security on medical reimbursement rejection. The zero-inflated negative binomial regression model (ZINB regression) was adopted to explore the relationship between socioeconomic factors and hospital visits among the rural migrant workers with social security.ResultsThe study population consisted of 848 rural migrant workers with high income who were young and middle-aged, low-educated, and covered by social security. Reimbursement rejection and abusive supervision for the rural migrant workers were observed. Logistic regression analysis showed that there were significant associations between socioeconomic factors and social security. ZINB regression showed that there were significant associations between socioeconomic factors and hospital visits among the rural migrant workers. Also, several dimensions of social security had significant associations with reimbursement rejections.ConclusionsThis study showed that social security inequity, medical inequity, and reimbursement inequity happened to the rural migrant workers simultaneously. Future policy should strengthen health justice and enterprises’ medical responsibilities to the employed rural migrant workers.

The Plight of Rural Migrant Workers in Urban China

Manufacturing opportunities in urban China have led to the mass migration of over 270 million rural residents to urban areas. We investigate the resulting upheaval in Chinese society using a macromarketing framework, especially the effect on the family unit. A qualitative study of 34 adult migrants in Shanghai is used to put a human face on the challenges faced by those distant from their families of origin (and in many cases their own children) and yet ostracized by most of those in urban society.

Food consumption of outgoing rural migrant workers in urban area of China: a QUAIDS approach

Purpose In the process of economic development and urbanization, it is important to capture the outgoing rural migrant workers’ food consumption characteristics for ensuring China’s future food security. The purpose of this paper is to empirically analyze the structural characteristics in food consumption demand of outgoing rural migrant workers. Design/methodology/approach The food consumption of rural migrant workers is estimated using a quaids approach by the GMM estimator to reveal the determinants of the food consumption of outgoing rural migrant workers in urban China based on a sample of 876 of outgoing rural migrant workers from the 2007-2009 household survey conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics of China. Findings The results show that the GMM estimator is consistent compared with the SUR estimator; the conditional expenditure elasticities of grain foods, livestock products, edible oils and vegetables by outgoing rural migrant workers are0.877, 1.081, 0.787 and 0.958, respectively; the unconditional expenditure elasticities of grain foods, livestock products, edible oils and vegetables are 0.634, 0.782, 0.569 and 0.693, respectively; the conditional Marshallian own-price elasticities of grain foods, livestock products, edible oils, and vegetables are -1.004, -1.019, -0.645 and -1.021, respectively. Practical implications First, the differences in food consuming patterns between rural residents and outgoing rural migrant workers should be emphasized in ensuring China’s food security for the policymakers. Second, how to ensure the supply for the increase in the consumption demand of livestock products in urban areas should be a major focus of China’s food security strategy. Originality/value 876 households of outgoing rural migrant worker from the 2007-2009 household survey conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics of China are used; compared the GMM estimator with the SUR estimator in the estimate of the QUAIDS model; it sheds light on the structural characteristics in food consumption demand of outgoing rural migrant workers.

Ethnic enclaves revisited: Effects on earnings of migrant workers in China

Among rural-to-urban migrants, migrant workers from the same origins tend to concentrate in the same workplaces. When this concentration in a workplace is sufficiently dense, we may consider it a native-place enclave. According to a large literature on U.S. immigrants, enclave participation may improve the economic well-being of immigrants. This study borrows the same reasoning to evaluate whether or not working in a native-place enclave affects earnings of migrant workers in urban China. We pay particular attention to heterogeneity not only in how migrants who work in an enclave may differ from those who choose to work in the open economy but also in varying earnings returns to enclave participation across different groups of migrant workers. Using data from a 2010 survey of migrant workers in the Pearl River Delta and the Yangzi River Delta, we match enclave workers and non-enclave workers with the same propensity to work in an enclave and then compare their earnings differences. We find a positive average earnings return to enclave participation, although this effect is smaller than that resulting from a naïve comparison. Moreover, we find that migrants with a high propensity to work in an enclave benefit more from enclave participation than those with a low propensity. Our findings generally support the enclave thesis and its role in internal migration in China.

Are migrants discriminated against in Chinese urban labour markets?

Abstract We use a nationally representative survey to investigate the incidence of discrimination against internal migrant workers in urban China, considering both migrants from rural areas (rural migrants) and those from other urban areas (urban migrants). We find that both rural and urban migrants are discriminated out of jobs with formal labour contracts. Results also suggest that urban migrants are compensated for working in the informal sector by earning higher wages. There is evidence however of wage discrimination against rural hukou status. A semi-parametric method suggests a larger discrimination against migrants in the upper half of the wage distribution. Discrimination against migrants seems not to decrease as their duration of stay in the urban labour market increases. JEL codes J7; J51; O15; N35

‘Filial son’, the family and identity formation among male migrant workers in urban China

This article is based on an ethnographic study of life histories of 28 rural–urban (internal) migrant men located within southern China. It explores their narratives with a particular focus on changing social relations within the family, from the perspective of migrant sons. It argues that traditional gender norms, such as those attached to being a ‘filial son’, are lived out, albeit reworked, among Chinese male migrant workers across generations. The men recount the role of traditional familial gender norms, which are central cultural resources in forging their ‘dislocated’ identities within specific temporal and spatial conditions. For example, being a ‘filial son’ has become an important reference point for these mobile male workers to actively negotiate their emerging masculine identities in the process of negotiating urban lives, while living away from their rural homes. The article also explores a more complex understanding of rural–urban migration in terms of critically engaging with the men's well-being as urban workers.

Place of Origin and Labour Market Outcomes Among Migrant Workers in Urban China

The localistic enclave is a special kind of enclave in urban China, which is characterized by high concentration of rural migrants from the same place of origin. Prior research has documented that rural migrants work in these localistic enclaves, but the significance of participation in them for labor market outcomes among migrant workers has yet to be determined. In this article, we argue that localistic economic enclaves may improve the labor force outcomes of rural-to-urban migrants. We report results from a study of the social determinants and consequences of working in localistic enclaves, based on data from a 2010 survey of migrant workers in the Pearl River and the Yangzi River Deltas. The results provide limited support for our hypothesis: Localistic enclaves enable migrant workers to earn higher earnings overall, but the earnings returns to human capital in an enclave are limited.

Life-course experiences of laid-off workers and their attitudes towards migrant workers in urban China

The labour market experiences of laid-off workers from three Chinese cities were analysed to determine how the event of being laid off impacted the lives of the workers over the ten-year period since redundancy. The trajectory for the workers over this period was downward sloping, with many workers descending into poverty. Some have been able to be upwardly mobile, due to social networks (guanxi) or taking advantage of market opportunities through education and training, but many of the workers who were upwardly mobile simply found unskilled jobs, which were less unappealing than manual factory work. Overall mobility, whether up or down, was on a minor scale. Older workers are still the most vulnerable group and require assistance in adjusting to the new labour system. Those workers who are feeling optimistic about their future in the open market and are not threatened by migrant workers, who fill the ranks of the supplementary-service sector, feel that they are contributing to the general increase in pro...