Rural Migrant Workers Research Articles

On-call work and depressive mood: A cross-sectional survey among rural migrant workers in China.

With the rapid development of China's "gig economy," the on-call work model has grown increasingly prevalent in China and has attracted a large number of rural migrant workers with its low employment threshold. However, this irregular employment mode may negatively impact the mental health of workers. This paper uses an ordinal logistic regression model to study the relationship between Chinese rural migrant workers' on-call work and their depression. The results showed that after controlling for relevant variables, the odds ratio of depressive mood among rural migrant workers engaged in on-call work was 1.22 (95% CI 1.04-1.43) compared with rural migrant workers who did not need to be on call. In further heterogeneity research, we found that on-call work is more likely to aggravate the depression risk of rural migrant workers who are highly dependent on the internet and have low-wage incomes. This research suggests that appropriate measures should be taken to mitigate the negative impact of on-call work on the mental health of rural migrant workers, and more attention needs to be paid to the mental health of lower salaried and gig workers. This paper provides a valuable sample of Chinese rural migrant workers for theoretical research on the relationship between on-call work and mental health and confirms the relationship between the two. These results contribute new ideas to the theory and practice of psychological crisis intervention aimed at Chinese rural migrant workers.

What Drives Migrants Back to Set up Firms? Return-home Entrepreneurial Intention of Rural Migrant Workers in China

What Drives Migrants Back to Set up Firms? Return-home Entrepreneurial Intention of Rural Migrant Workers in China

Are “Nongmingong” and “Rural Migrant Workers” Referring to the Same Group of Chinese Laborers? Clarifying the Translation, Definition and Data Accuracy of Nongmingong

Are “Nongmingong” and “Rural Migrant Workers” Referring to the Same Group of Chinese Laborers? Clarifying the Translation, Definition and Data Accuracy of Nongmingong

“Impact Of Covid-19 Pandemic On Indian Rural Livelihood, Health And Economy”

Rural migrant workers swarmed the streets during the COVID-19 shutdown, marching “to their villages in search of” compassion and warmth. While “many made it to their homes”, a few did not, and they perished on the “streets and railway lines”. “The current study” sheds light “on the” hardships faced by “migrant workers” “and the effects of COVID-19 on India's” rural economies. The study's key finding indicates that “400 million workers in India's informal economy run the risk of becoming even” more impoverished “as a result of the crisis”. There will be a community spread as a result of the low testing and low reporting of COVID-19 cases. A large number of individuals will experience extreme poverty as a result of the reverse migration's excessive strain on the rural and agricultural economies. “COVID-19 will impact India's rural economy in the short and long terms”. The government's economic package primarily consists of long-term initiatives, but in order to safeguard migrant workers and marginal farmers, short-term initiatives like wage subsidies and monetary incentives should be provided. “The primary obstacle to the successful execution of programmes is widespread systemic corruption”.

Entrepreneurial effect of rural return migrants: Evidence from China.

Entrepreneurship is an important means of economic development. Rural migrant workers returning home to start their own businesses can promote employment, alleviate poverty, and achieve rural development structural transformation of rural development. The entrepreneurial effect of rural return migrants is important for rural economic development. Using the data of the China Labor Force Dynamics Survey (CLDS thereafter) 2018 and China Household Finance Survey (CHFS thereafter) 2019, we analyze the entrepreneurial effects of return migrants upon their return to their hometowns. We construct a career choice model and build a mathematical model based on it to formulate the hypothesis. Then, we use the Probit regression model to test the hypothesis empirically. Results find that the rural return migrants can promote entrepreneurship among residents. Land circulation, human capital, and physical capital are stimulating factors in promoting the rural entrepreneurial activities of return migrants. We recommend that the government actively guide the rural return migrants to start businesses and provide security for entrepreneurial activities by upgrading various entrepreneurial elements.

Accommodating China's Floating Population: Local Variations and Determinants of Housing Policies for Rural Migrant Workers

AbstractWhat are the various ways in which local governments in China accommodate migrants through housing policies, and what are the forces that drive these variations? Through systematic coding of policy documents from 97 prefecture-level cities, this study captures the patterns of migrant housing policies using cluster analysis. We found that 18.6 per cent of the cities adopted a residual approach. Most cities adopted a rental-based approach (public and private rental, and collective rental) that could only meet migrants’ short-term housing needs. Only a few cities (12.4 per cent) adopted a citizenship-oriented approach, which best fits the central government's overarching goal of facilitating migrant workers’ long-term settlement in the host cities. Regression analyses examining the determinants of local migrant housing policies showed that the policy variations were not only shaped by economic and political concerns but also the salience of urban issues (problem-solving functions) and previous welfare generosity (path-dependency tendencies).

How Family Living Arrangements and Migration Distances Shape the Settlement Intentions of Rural Migrant Workers in China

Rural migrant workers and their families will decide the future of China's urbanization. Using data from the "China Migrants Dynamic Survey and Hundreds of Villages Investigation" carried out in 2018, we examine whether and how family living arrangements and migration distances shape rural migrant workers' settlement intentions in urban areas. In general, rural migrant workers' settlement intention is shown to be weak. However, individuals with children are more likely to have a stronger intention to settle permanently in urban areas. Among geographical factors, geospatial distance exerts a negative influence on migrant parents' settlement intention when the interaction effect of family living arrangements and migration distances is considered. Migrant families are increasingly concentrated in cities near their hometowns with a low entry barrier that allows them to gain access to better amenities. Socio-economic factors, especially disposable income, human resources, and housing conditions, play significant roles in migrant parents' settlement intention. The age and hometown region of migrant parents are also closely related to their intentions to settle in urban areas. Potential channels for the management of urbanization policy are also explored.

Where there is a will, there's a way: Job search clarity, reemployment crafting and reemployment quality.

Job hunting is regarded as a self-regulatory process. However, few studies have examined the mechanism underlying the job search goal-performance relationship from the perspective of the self-regulatory behavior of reemployment crafting (RC). Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the mediating role of RC in the relationship between job search clarity (JSC) and reemployment quality (RQ) and the moderating role of the reemployment context. A three-wave study was conducted among 295 rural migrant workers who had experienced unemployment to successful reemployment in China. Model 4 and Model 9 from SPSS macro PROCESS were used to test the moderated mediation model. The findings indicated that (1) JSC was positively correlated with RQ; (2) seeking resources (SR) and seeking challenging demands (SCD) fully mediated the relationship between JSC and RQ; (3) supportive environment (SEn) and challenging environment (CEn), independently, have moderating effect on the relationship between JSC and SR, as well as the relationship between JSC and SCD; and (4) the mediating effect of SR as well as SCD was significant and greater when SEn and CEn were both at high levels. This study contributes to goal-setting theory and highlights the important roles of RC and the reemployment context.

What makes Chinese rural migrants self-employed: a qualitative perspective

This study scrutinizes the causes, configuration, and consequences of rural migrants’ motivations for becoming self-employed. It aims to solve two main problems in the current literature. The first is that previous studies primarily explain migrants’ self-employment through economic variables when other factors (e.g., autonomy, meaningfulness, and work environment) might be more important. Second, no study has been conducted to qualitatively understand migrants’ self-employment outcomes. By drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with rural-to-urban migrant workers conducted in four regions of China, this article provides insights into the pecuniary and nonpecuniary motivations of rural migrants’ employment decisions. Notably, it finds that most rural migrant workers in wage employment sectors are not in a position to exercise free choice regarding their working arrangements. In contrast, the prospect of achieving a higher level of income, greater autonomy, and more flexibility and freedom is important and attractive aspects of self-employment, with apparent gender differences. Nevertheless, migrants’ self-employment often involves self-sacrifice and economic and social marginalization. Therefore, it is unlikely that migrants select self-employment as an effective means for status acquisition.

What Influences Family Migration Decision of China’s New Generation Rural-urban Migrants? A Multilevel Logistic Regression Analysis

The massive scale of new-generation rural-urban migrants in China has attracted extensive scholarly attention in recent years. While previous studies on China’s rural migrant workers focus on migrants’ individual settlement intentions, migrant’s family migration decision-making and the intergenerational differences between the old-generation migrants and new-generation migrants are underexplored. Based on the data of 2017 China Migrants Dynamic Survey, this paper adopts a multilevel logistic regression approach to explore family and destination factors influencing family migration decision of China’s new generation rural migrant workers. The empirical results reveal that both the migrants’ family and destination attributes significantly influence their family migration decision. The demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of family have been pivotal factors underlying family migration decision of China’s new generation rural-urban migrants, while 16.9% of the chances is explained by between-destination differences. Self-employed migrants with housing properties in host cities, long migration duration and high-income level are more likely to migrate with their family members. Yet, the possibility of family migration is found to be significantly and negatively correlated with the age, education level, number of children and inter-provincial mobility of the new generation migrant workers. In addition, new generation rural-urban migrants’ family migration is more likely to be found in cities with service-oriented industry structure, better environmental quality, and higher hukou barriers which is possibly related to more job opportunities. These research findings not only complement the existing literature on China’s new generation rural-urban migrants, but also have important policy implications for reforming hukou system and enhancing social integration of rural-to-urban migrant population.

Rural migration, governance, and public health nexus: Implications for economic development.

With the deepening of rural aging and the increasing role of human capital in the non-agricultural employment labor market, this paper uses the data of China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS), ordinary least squares (OLS) and instrumental variable method (IV) to try to examine the impact of rural migrant workers' education on their parents' health. Since a rural family may include more than one child, a sample of migrant workers with a high education level is used in the benchmark regression, and a sample of migrant workers with a low education level is used to test the robustness of the relationship. The results showed that the education of migrant workers had a significant positive impact on parents' health. The sample with the least education was used for the robustness, and the results did not change. The IV-probit method is used to address potential endogeneity, and the results remain stable. Heterogeneity analysis shows that there are significant differences in the impact of migrant workers' education on the health of parents from different groups. This positive effect has a greater impact on the health of parents who are older, less educated, and do not live with their children. Mediation analysis shows that children's economic ability, captured by income and work type, and their parents' health behavior, captured by sleep, alcohol consumption, and physical examinations, mediate this relationship. Thus, migrant workers' education affects their parents' health mainly through relaxing budget constraints and improving their parents' health production efficiency. In addition, this paper also found that education of migrant workers may significantly increase parental depression. Based on the above analysis, this paper argues that increasing investment in rural education is conducive to improving the health of migrant farmers' parents, thereby promoting the transfer of rural labor to non-agricultural industries and cities, curbing the rapid rise in labor costs, and promoting the healthy development of the economy.

Between construction yard and village: Changing relations of caste and hierarchy among Madhya Pradesh's labouring classes

AbstractIn Madhya Pradesh, India, rural migrant workers hired in flyover's construction yards experiment a space of work where the social practices relating to caste separation and hierarchy are temporally softened. This paper shows that these processes of conviviality, through mixing between castes and trans‐communitarian work identities based on the hierarchies of labour, are taking part in the lower classes' long quest for less oppressive labour relations. Starting from the construction yard, and then going to the village, this paper shows that the labour relations involved in the circulation of rural migrants to the flyover construction yards are contributing to shaping their complex and flexible social consciousness in a context of slow reconfiguration of oppressive rural labour relations.

Exploring and analyzing Factors of Migrant Worker’s difficulty to Return Hometown: Focusing on Countryside

In China's development, a continuous and irreversible trend has emerged in rural areas—the one-way flow of rural labor to urban areas. Besides, it is difficult for those who have left to return to their hometowns. Through a questionnaire survey of rural migrant workers in Ankang City, Shaanxi Province, we explore the gap between migrant workers and rural workers in terms of employment and entrepreneurship and analyze what affects the motivation to return to rural areas such as the inequality of resources between urban and rural areas, the choice of employment industry, and makes suggestions for future development. The result helps find the solution of the problem of rural entrepreneurship.

Research on the Linkage Mechanism between Migrant Workers Returning Home to Start Businesses and Rural Industry Revitalization Based on the Combination Prediction and Dynamic Simulation Model

Township and rural migrant workers are returning to the business personnel's main force. Party 18 proposed a rural revitalization strategy, and the central committee of the State Council issued a series of encouraging policy measures to bring them back. The study found that migrant workers' return-home entrepreneurship and the connection between the rural industries on the basis of factor resources flow are related. As a result, this study analyzed the practical situation of migrant workers' return-home entrepreneurship. Next, it used a combination forecast method and dynamic simulation model of the migrant workers' return-home entrepreneurship and revitalization of the relationship with the rural industry. The resuscitation of rural industries can be efficiently facilitated by the return of rural migrant workers to launch firms. Their success can attract more migrant workers to launch businesses. The total regeneration of rural areas and the prosperity of farmers can be achieved by effectively linking the return of migrant workers to launch businesses and the revival of rural industries.

Introduction: 20 years of welfare reform in China (2000–2020): Challenges from developmentalism to COVID‐19

AbstractChina as a welfare system is not yet well understood in social policy circles, despite being a well‐studied case in public administration and political science. Would this party‐state care to commit for its citizens' welfare? For many, associating the idea of a welfare state with China is still something to be frowned upon. Most available literature, especially in the English language, describes social policies in China as residual, unequally distributed, strongly dependent on local finances, prone to social dumping—especially for rural residents and migrant workers—paternalistic, disregarding social needs and so on. Yet, we believe that the social dumping practices of the 1980s and 1990s are now a thing of the past. As the government has taken a decidedly pro‐welfare stance since the 2000s, it could be more reasonable to identify different historical phases through which the welfare system took shape in China. We identify and discuss three stages in particular: the ‘iron rice bowl’ phase of socialist China (1949–1978), the welfare shedding resulting from China's opening up to the market (1979–2002), and the ‘social policy era’ characterised by major welfare expansion (2002–2020).

Agricultural Population Supported in Rural Areas under Traditional Planting Mode Based on Opportunity Cost Analysis

The return of rural migrant workers through increasing agricultural income by expanding farming scale is significant for rural sustainable development without rural population loss. This paper selected six representative counties in Henan Province, China’s major grain-producing province, to conduct a questionnaire survey, investigated the incomes of farmers from farming and migrant workers, calculated moderate farming scale under different opportunity costs, and also estimated the agricultural population that can be supported by arable land resources. Results are as follows: (1) Under the traditional planting mode, annual per capita income of farmers in farming was USD 342.18, which was substantially lower than USD 5255.63 in migrant workers. This huge income gap has led to continuous rural population loss. (2) Under the opportunity cost of farming income equal to migrant workers income, moderate farming scales of the six selected counties were 1.39, 1.17, 1.22, 1.08, 1.34, and 1.01 ha, respectively. Under the 0.8x and 0.6x opportunity cost, corresponding moderate farming scales were 1.11, 0.94, 1.11, 0.86, 1.07, and 1.34 ha; and 0.84, 0.70, 0.73, 0.65, 0.80 and 1.01 ha, respectively. (3) On the basis of the three moderate farming scales and status quo of arable land resources, agricultural populations that can be supported by rural Henan Province were 8.0386 million, 10.0479 million and 13.3942 million, respectively. Findings can guide the formulation of rural revitalization strategic measures and the preparation of village territorial spatial planning.

Low-End Accumulation: Spatial Transformation and Social Stratification in a Beijing Urban Village

AbstractIn late 2017, a tragic fire in southern Beijing led to a massive eviction and demolition campaign that drove out tens of thousands of rural migrant workers in bleak winter weather. While the evictions were widely covered by the mass media, few analyses examined the gongyu 公寓 (apartment complex), a low-rent housing complex where the fire broke out. Based on fieldwork in Beijing's northern fringe, this article examines the spatial transformation of residences from cramped one-story farmhouses to gongyu and how it signals the social stratification of migrant tenants. The emergence of the better-equipped gongyu, as an alternative modernity, caters to the influx of young tenants and migrants working in the service sector. Meanwhile, the rise of the gongyu has propelled an increase in the subcontracting of property management. The rationalization and specialization of the fast-growing private rental housing market have further led to estranged living among migrant tenants and landlords, who experience different forms of displacement in urban villages. Gongyu is the outcome of low-end accumulation, which is intended primarily for constructing low-quality, low-cost rental projects for the “low-end population.” Despite its prevalence, the urban village gongyu represents an overlooked, unrecognized, and undesirable mode of urbanization, which is the target of the recurring housing crackdown in China's capital.

The Bottom of the Heart of the Property Builder: Evidence from Online Messages of Chinese Rural Migrant Workers

The Bottom of the Heart of the Property Builder: Evidence from Online Messages of Chinese Rural Migrant Workers

Socio-economic inequalities in health service utilization among Chinese rural migrant workers with New Cooperative Medical Scheme: a multilevel regression approach

BackgroundWhile reducing inequity in health service utilization is an important goal of China’s health system, it has been widely acknowledged that a huge number of rural migrant workers cannot be effectually protected against risks with the New Rural Cooperative Medical Insurance (NCMS).MethodData of the 2016 China Labor-force Dynamic Survey and the Chinese Urban Statistical Yearbook were used. The multilevel regression approach was implemented with a nationally representative sample of rural migrant workers with NCMS. Our study adopted the concentration index and its decomposition method to quantify the inequality of their health service utilization.ResultThe multilevel model analysis indicated that impact variables for health service utilization were not concentrated, especially the contextual and individual characteristics. The concentration indices of the probability of two weeks outpatient and the probability of inpatient were -0.168 (95%CI:-0.236,-0.092) and -0.072 (95%CI:-1.085,-0.060), respectively. The horizontal inequality indices for the probability of two-week outpatient and the probability of inpatient were -0.012 and 0.053, respectively.ConclusionThe health service utilization of rural migrant workers with NCMS is insufficient. Our study highlighted that substantial inequalities in their health service utilization did exist. In addition, their need of health service utilization increased the pro-poor inequality. Based on the findings, our study offered notable implications on compensation policies and benefit packages to improve the equality among rural migrant workers with NCMS.

Identifying Factors of a Financial Literacy Scale Used among Vulnerable Populations

Financial literacy scales are often used as a diagnostic tool to assess financial knowledge levels among various populations, although few of them have undergone empirical testing. This study utilized exploratory factor analysis (EFA) with a sample of Chinese rural migrant workers to identify the underlying structure of a financial literacy scale and its psychometric properties. EFA reduced the 23 items to 5 factors that explain for 69.08% of the variance in financial literacy. Five factors are identified that are daily money management, math skills, saving and borrowing, inflation, and long-term investment. Findings suggest that practitioners who work with migrant workers or groups with lower income, lower educational levels can use this instrument to assess financial literacy levels and explore interventions that improve specific areas of financial knowledge.