Rural-urban Migrant Workers Research Articles

Peasant traders, migrant workers and “supermarkets”: Low‐cost provisions and the reproduction of migrant labor in China

AbstractThis article analyzes the social and spatial dynamics of the mobile trade in low‐cost goods by rural people from a mountainous region of China's Zhejiang province and how these interact with the mobility and social reproductive patterns of the rural–urban migrant workers they cater to. Also formally categorized as peasants, the traders not only supply the goods necessary for the maintenance of the workers but also of their spatially divided household, thus contributing to the reproduction of migrant labor power more generally. In doing so, they assume mobility trajectories that align with those of factory production and experience familial trade‐offs commonly experienced by migrant workers. Meanwhile, the provision of low‐cost goods to migrant workers has enabled a thriving economy employing peasant families for whom agricultural livelihoods slowly disappear. These dynamics indicate the mutual connection between waged and self‐employed labor that works in the interest of capital accumulation at the same time with the differentiation of migrant labor. As in other comparable Asian contexts, their connection lies at the heart of the state‐sponsored production regime premised on the low‐cost reproduction of flexible migrant labor.

The Interplay of Migrant Workers’ Working Hours, Income, and Well-Being in China

There is a history of overwork in China, and regulations to protect workers are insufficient. This study explores the relationship between working long hours and self-rated health among rural-urban migrant workers in China. Survey data from the 2018 China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) is used to construct a simultaneous equation model, and the 3SLS method is applied. The results showed that: (1) Migrant workers had good health. However, overtime work is very common among migrant workers in China, and male migrants work more overtime. (2) Migrant laborers’ health and income are causally related, with better health leading to higher income. In contrast, the compensatory effect of income by extending working hours on health is smaller than the damage caused by overtime work for the male migrants who have more severe overtime work, resulting in a negative income effect on health. (3) The incentive effect of income on labor supply and the positive interaction effect of increasing labor hours to increase income are only reflected in the standard labor time sample. Therefore, for the heavy overwork group whose working hours have already reached the limit, income increases can no longer motivate them to extend their labor hours. Therefore, provincial and national policy transformations are needed to regularize working hours and remuneration while maintaining individual health.

Study on the Dilemma and Countermeasures of Rural-urban Migrant Workers Citizenization

Study on the Dilemma and Countermeasures of Rural-urban Migrant Workers Citizenization

Impact of Social Capital on Land Arrangement Behavior of Migrant Workers in China

<p><big>In China, the land arrangement behavior of over 160 million rural-urban migrant workers is closely related to the optimal allocation of rural land resources and sustainable development of urban and rural areas. Although previous studies show that social capital affects migrant workers’ land arrangement behavior, few empirical studies reveal the relationship between them, and the corresponding interventions remain unclear. Using survey data collected in Henan Province, China, and a multinomial logit model, this study empirically analyzes the mechanism behind the impact of social capital on migrant workers’ land arrangement behavior from the perspective of social capital. Results illustrate that social capital has a significant impact on the land arrangement behavior of migrant workers. The behavior is significantly correlated with the scale of migrant workers’ urban social networks, the degree of urban social trust, and urban belonging. More social capital in urban areas indicates a higher tendency for migrant workers to abandon their land contracting rights and become permanent urban residents. This study reveals the mechanism of social capital affecting migrant workers’ land arrangement behavior and provides a reference for decision-making with respect to guiding migrant workers’ land management behavior for other countries facing similar social problems.</big></p>

Decent work among rural-urban migrant workers in China: evidence and challenges

PurposeThis study aims to examine how Chinese rural-urban migrant workers' socio-economic status was associated with their decent work.Design/methodology/approachGrounded in the psychology of working theory (PWT), this study tested the path from rural-urban migrant workers' socio-economic status to decent work via work volition, with this path moderated by environmental uncertainty and trade union support. 470 rural-urban migrant workers from four manufacturing enterprises were investigated.FindingsResults indicated that rural-urban migrant workers' socio-economic status was positively associated with rural-urban migrant workers' decent work through work volition. In addition, environmental uncertainty weakened the impact of socio-economic status on work volition while trade union support strengthened the relationship between socio-economic status and work volition.Originality/valueThe study contributes to the growing research on the PWT by testing its utility among rural-urban migrant workers in the Chinese context. The study also identifies the crucial effects of environmental uncertainty and trade union support, which are distinctive characters of contemporary China, in the formation process of rural-urban migrant workers' decent work. A detailed explanation of the results and implications is discussed in the end.

An Economy of Lies: Informal Income, Phone-Banking and Female Migrant Workers in Kolkata, India

This article will analyze rural-urban migrant workers’ multiple journeys of financial secrecies, gendered solidarities and covert income-management through the use of smartphones and net-banking in the city. Using the narratives of informal domestic workers in Kolkata, a city in eastern India, I show how migrant women managed a shadow network of personal savings, free of surveillance from their rural kin, that was creatively positioned at the interface of modern digital technologies and traditional social relations. I develop the concept of ‘migra-monies’ to underline how such hidden cash flows within migration landscapes emboldened female workers to envision non-normative gendered subjectivities and economically secure fiscal futures.

Trade Unions and the Welfare of Rural-Urban Migrant Workers in China

Using a panel survey, the authors investigate how the welfare of rural-urban migrant workers in China is affected by trade union presence at the workplace. Controlling for individual fixed effects, they find the following. Relative to workers from workplaces without union presence or with inactive unions, both union-covered non-members and union members in workplaces with active unions earn higher monthly income, are more likely to have a written contract, be covered by social insurances, receive fringe benefits, express work-related grievances through official channels, feel more satisfied with their lives, and are less likely to have mental health problems.

Can Insurance Integration Influence Labor Migration? Evidence from China’s Urban-Rural Resident Medical Insurance Reform

This paper introduces China’s Urban-Rural Resident Medical Insurance (URRMI) Reform to examine whether health insurance integration has an impact on labor migration, using data from the China Labor-force Dynamics Survey (CLDS). I find that the insurance integration drives the relatively high probability, for participants of the URRMI, to migrate from rural to urban workplaces. The positive effects are significant among certain cohorts: the young workers and the old, workers in Eastern China and Western China, and workers with efforts. In addition, the URRMI provides high quality medical services and ensures medical reimbursements for rural-urban migrant workers.

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.

Modern Womanhood, the Ideology of the Housewife, and Young Female Rural–Urban Migrants in the 1960s and 1970s in South Korea

This paper attempts to clarify how young female rural–urban migrant workers were positioned within the ideology of the housewife as a form of modern womanhood, which was regulated by the developmental state as part of the modern nation-state building in the 1960s and 1970s in South Korea, by analyzing media discourses on the mobility, space and labor of single female workers. First, within the ideology of the housewife, in which women were required to settle down in the private sphere away from the main breadwinners after the Korean War, the mobility of young rural girls was depicted as ‘unsettled’ and ‘unstable’ and thus was socially deviant relative to the ‘settled’ and ‘cared for’ women in the private sphere. Second, the working space as well as the residential space for single female workers was illustrated as a loss of control of their bodies and sexuality under the normative ideology of the housewife, which led to the idealization of the institution of marriage as the final savior for single female workers. Finally, under the patriarchal system and the redefinition of women’s labor in the developmental state based upon familism, the labor by single female workers was ‘housewifized’ either as ‘filial piety’ or a ‘natural duty’ to the family as well as to the motherland.

Reshaping co-existence of tradition and modernity: polymedia in gender identity negotiation of Dagongmei

ABSTRACT Against the rise of polymedia as a global phenomenon, this study bridges the theory of polymedia with one strand of migration research that focuses on gender identity negotiation of marginalised migrant women. Especially, this study aims to capture how traditionally defined gender constraints and nascent desires for modernity may possibly encounter and act upon each other when migrant women navigate the complicated environment of polymedia. This examination is situated in the transitioning post-Mao China, with an emphasis on digital media and technology usage of Dagongmei – the group of young, single female rural-urban migrant workers. Confined physical and social mobility between rural and urban China tends to contribute to their specifically exacerbated gender struggles with the collisions between tradition and modernity, which are reflected in their media practices. Ethnographic fieldwork in a medium-size factory in Northeast China enables this study to unfold the dynamic experiences of these migrant women with the alternate separation, convergence, and clashes between tradition and modernity in polymedia.

Destination choices of Chinese rural–urban migrant workers: Jobs, amenities, and local spillovers

AbstractUsing the 2014 China Migrants Dynamic Survey, we analyze rural–urban migrant workers’ destination choices after the global financial crisis, with an emphasis on jobs, amenities, and local spillovers. By using an equilibrium‐sorting model, this paper disentangles local spillovers from local attributes in the estimation process. We employ both an artificial instrumental variable and the provincial highway passenger flow in 1979 to tackle the endogeneity issue. After controlling for the network effects of migrants from the same origin, we find a separate and strong preference for colocating with a large population of migrants, regardless of origin. The results remain robust when we take into account labor supply‐driven migration, spatial autocorrelation between provinces, different industry definitions, and regional differences within provinces. Our results imply that due to institutional barriers, the rural‐migrant community will still be a very important factor in the foreseeable future. In addition, as the ongoing industrial upgrading and transfer policies in China may lead to a westward movement of rural–urban migrants, the movement will be expedited when the older, less educated, or lower income migrants relocate.

Sex Work and the Karmic Wheel: How Buddhism Influences Sex Work in China.

As prostitution is widely condemned as a form of criminality in China, there is a need to examine how Buddhism functions not as a form of therapy for the purposes of rehabilitating or deterring prostitution but as a force that encourages participation in prostitution. In this work, we argue that rural-urban migrant sex workers who are Buddhists appropriate the religion's teachings of compassion, mindfulness, and karma to find a renewed sense of meaning and purpose in their livelihoods. We illustrate how Buddhism allows sex workers to cultivate the affective labor required for the purposes of servicing male clients in conjunction with finding positive purpose in their lives. In doing so, their bodies gain affirmative value in the form of helping their heterosexual male clients address deficits in their masculinities.

Work Stress and Depressive Symptoms in Chinese Migrant Workers: The Moderating Role of Community Factors.

This study aimed to examine depressive symptoms in ruralurban migrant workers in mainland China, with a focus on the moderating roles of community factors (i.e., community support network, community cohesion and community composition) in the relation between work stress and depressive symptoms. This study used secondary data from a national representative study conducted by the Social Survey Center at SUN-YETSEN University of China in 2014. The final sample contained 1434 participants from 29 provinces of China (Mean age = 36.47, SD = 11.91). Being female, lower self-rated health, lower levels of self-rated class, lower levels of community cohesion and higher work stress were related to higher depressive symptoms. Community cohesion was found to lessen the migrant workers depressive symptoms but was not identified as a moderator for work stress and depressive symptoms. Community supportive networks moderated the relation between work stress and depressive symptoms. Rural-urban migrant workers in China experienced high work stress and high depressive symptoms. Public health policies or programs should help expand and strengthen migrant workers' supportive network size, and facilitate the creation of community cohesion to lessen depressive symptoms.

Space, signs, and legitimate workers’ identities: an ethnography of a Beijing “urban village”

ABSTRACTThis paper investigates the linguistic landscape (LL) signs of an “urban village” inhabited by rural–urban migrant workers in suburban Beijing. Migrant workers have moved to urban centers for low-skill low-income jobs on a massive scale over past decades as China has undergone rapid economic changes. Some of them start to invest their time and energy in building a new workers’ community and in constructing urban workers’ identities through linguistic and semiotic practices. Producing and displaying LL signage is part of this identity construction process. In this study, I present three examples to analyze the relationship between space, LL signs and identity construction. Ethnography allows me not only to observe the LL signs as semiotic resources but also to approach the authors and the audience and to find out their uptake of the signs. The results show that the LL signs shape social meanings of the space and the space in turn is agentive in constructing its inhabitants’ identities.

Maintaining Ties and Reaffirming Unity: Family Rituals in the Age of Migration

ABSTRACTThis ethnographic study examines the forms and functions of ritualizing in migrant families, using Chinese rural-urban migrant workers’ annual Spring Festival family reunions as a case study. In-depth interviews with migrant workers and participant observations of family reunions in rural China reveal that both celebratory and non-celebratory family activities are ritualized. In particular, the study suggests that the Spring Festival family reunion has transformed into a meta-ritual comprised of five categories of ritual activities: festival rituals, reunion rituals, patterned interactions, reunions with friends, and communal rituals. These rituals constitute both the internal and external identities of migrant families, but may also remind them of the traumatic reality of family separation or trigger hidden tensions within the family. Implications for studying family communication in times of mobility and family diversity are discussed.

“The Bag Is My Home”: Recycling “China Bags” in Contemporary African Art

“The Bag Is My Home”: Recycling “China Bags” in Contemporary African Art

Migration and marital instability among migrant workers in China: A gender perspective

This paper presents an examination of how migration affects the marital stability of migrant workers, whether there is gender difference in migrant workers’ marital instability, and whether there is gender difference in the determinants of migrant workers’ marital stability. Poisson regression analysis of survey data related to Guangzhou rural–urban migrant workers showed that there is gender difference in marital instability, and that female migrant workers have a higher level of marital instability than male migrant workers. Migrating unaccompanied, inter-provincial migration, distance between the hometown of spouse from husband’s family’s location, and non-traditional gender views were found to be positively related to migrant workers’ marital instability. Some of these influences are mediated by marital satisfaction. In addition, the influence on marital instability of migrating unaccompanied, and distance between the hometown of spouse and husband’s family’s location were identified as more important for female migrant workers, while the influence of inter-provincial migration on marital instability is more important for male migrant workers. It was determined that there are gender differences in the influence of wife's income and gender views: the wife’s income relates positively to male migrant workers’ marital stability, but negatively to female migrant workers’ marital stability. The results show that migration has a stronger influence on female migrant workers’ perceptions of marital instability.

Housing expenditure and home purchasing behaviors of rural-urban migrants in China

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the housing behaviors of rural-urban migrant workers in China and the associated socioeconomic determinants.Design/methodology/approachThe authors developed a model to empirically identify the effects of income in multi-dimension, destination expected to live in the future, local housing policy, and a set of individual characteristics on housing-related expenditure and home purchase of rural-urban migrants. A survey data collected by the Development Research Center of the State Council was employed.FindingsThe results showed that migrants’ expecting place to live in the future is a significant factor influencing their housing-related decisions. Including migrant workers in local housing security system of the host city could also significantly improve their incentive to purchase home. Income jointly with income stability affects migrants’ housing-related expenditure positively, but has an insignificant effect on home purchases in host city. The cost to buy home in city is still far away from migrant’s affordability is a likely explanation.Originality/valueTo the best of our knowledge, this is the first study aiming to investigate rural-urban migrants’ housing behavior in host city and to empirically identify the associated influencing factors.

Sustaining Regional Advantages in Manufacturing: Skill Accumulation of Rural–Urban Migrant Workers in the Coastal Area of China

Extant research pays little attention to unorganized migrant workers’ skill accumulation/upgrading from the perspective of the labor supply. This paper takes China as an example to explore the factors influencing the skill accumulation of rural–urban migrant workers (RUMWs), with the purpose of discovering how to sustain or reshape regional competitive advantages by improving RUMWs’ skill accumulation. Structured questionnaire surveys were adopted for data collection in Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province and Taizhou City, Zhejiang Province located in the Yangtze River Delta in eastern China. In total, 700 questionnaires were issued and 491 effective questionnaires were recovered. It takes the perspective of individual laborers, with special regard to the effects of localization on the laborers’ skill accumulation within the context of globalization. It adopts a broad viewpoint including intra-firm skill-biased strategy (as a response to intense competition), inter-firm relationships, and the accessibility of local non-firm organizations. The findings indicate that firms’ skill preference, which impacts employees’ skills and innovation ability and stimulates them to learn with initiative, have a significant influence on RUMWs’ skill accumulation. In terms of collective efficiency based on the co-competitive relationship between local firms, the more intensive interactions are, the more opportunities RUMWs are afforded for skill accumulation. The accessibility of local institutions and favorable policies also benefit RUMWs’ skill accumulation. In addition, the place itself, as a synthesized space of a firm’s internal labor-management relations and inter-organizational relations, also exerts an influence on and causes regional differences in RUMWs’ skill accumulation.