Internal Migration in China

This migration has been especially striking because in Maoist times mobility was severely restricted. Few people moved at all, and rural to urban migration was particularly difficult. When the restrictions were relaxed in the period of economic reforms, a clear distinction was maintained between people with rural residence papers (nongye hukou) and those with urban residence (feinongye hukou). Only the latter had the unconditional right to live in the urban areas and full entitlement to urban welfare and health and education provision. Rural migrants in the urban areas (mingong) on the other hand, retained their right to a share of land in their villages. Much migration was circular. Young people went to the urban areas for a few years until they had saved enough to achieve such goals as marrying, setting up a small business, building a new house or putting a relative through school. They then returned to live either in their home village or in nearby small towns.
Labour migration was stimulated by China’s rapid economic growth. Established cities attracted migrants to work in manufacturing, in the service sector, on construction sites, and also as petty traders, while booming export industries in the coastal zones created a tremendous demand for assembly-line labour. Increased economic inequality since the 1980s between the poor agricultural provinces of the interior and the industrializing coastal regions provided more incentives to migrate. Migration brought considerable advantages to rural people and the cut in migrant employment that has accompanied the current recession has inevitably caused them losses.
Migrant life in the cities
Although migration has been legally permitted since the 1980s, migrants continue to suffer considerable discrimination in the cities. Most mingong have some high school education and are well educated by the standards of their own communities. In urban areas, however, they are looked down on. Marked out by regional accents, unsophisticated appearance and most of all by their rural residence papers (hukou), they are excluded from the better jobs. They cluster in heavy, dirty work such as cleaning or construction, and in unskilled assembly-line manufacturing. They do not enjoy the subsidized health care or education to which urban residents are entitled. Construction workers are usually accommodated by their employers in shacks, while factory workers are housed in cheaply built dormitories. Other mingong tend to congregate together in shanty towns on the outskirts of towns. Helped by friends or relatives to find jobs and housing, they often live and work with people from their home region. In the early years, most migrants were young, single and male. However, as migration chains became established, many women also went to the urban areas, usually either as factory or service workers.
Migrants’ lives are hard and insecure. Employers facing cut-throat competition in both the construction and manufacturing industries attempt to keep their labour costs as low as possible. Pay and conditions are therefore poor, especially at the lowest level of subcontracting. In the worst cases, employers pay less than has been promised, or do not pay at all. Most factory workers work 10 to 12 hours a day, many have no regular day off. Health and safety standards are poor and there is a high rate of work-related accidents and ill health. Migrants who are sick or injured must usually pay for their treatment themselves, and if they are unable to work, they return to their villages.
Urban reactions and government policy
Migrants have often been seen as a threat to social order, especially in the early years. They were frequently subjected to roundups and trucked out of town if their papers were not in order. However, the authorities came to recognize the utility of rural migration. Cheap migrant labour made China attractive to foreign investors and kept manufacturing costs low. Migration also eased the problems of labour surplus in the countryside and remittances contributed to rural development and poverty alleviation. The state therefore began to develop policies intended to control rather than to prevent migration.
Migrant settlement was permitted in small and medium-sized towns. In larger urban settlements, a system of temporary residence permits allowed the state to monitor migrant workers and assisted in urban planning and the maintenance of social order. There was official concern that rural migrants might undermine the success of the one-child family policy in urban areas and married women migrants are therefore required to show ‘birth-planning cards’ issued in their home towns, recording their fertility history and the contraception they use.
Labour protection and the migrant labourers
The Chinese state has shown considerable ambivalence toward labour protection in relation to the migrant labour force. The 2005 Labour Law, further strengthened by the 2008 Labour Contract Law, requires that every worker should have a contract, that the maximum work week should be 40 hours with one day off, that overtime should be paid and that wages may not be delayed. Women workers have maternity rights, child labour is prohibited and working conditions are required to be safe and sanitary. These laws are almost universally violated where migrants are employed, and there is insufficient effort at enforcement. Newly-arrived mingong, ignorant of their rights, will often work under almost any conditions.
Workers can take disputes to a mediation committee or to the official trade union. In some cases such action helps, but often official bodies have been unwilling to intervene on the side of migrants. Local protectionism opposes real changes in the system. Local governments benefit from investment in their areas and from the fees they levy on migrant workers. They do not wish to drive investment away to areas where easier labour regimes prevail.
Under pressure from international organizations, some multinational firms have made efforts to ensure minimum wages and good working conditions at the factories from which they source their goods in China. But subcontracting makes such codes difficult to enforce. Moreover, the multinationals push subcontractors to produce at lower prices. While some foreign companies welcomed the Chinese labour laws, others lobbied against them and threatened to take investment elsewhere. Local Chinese, Hong Kong, Korean, and Taiwanese-invested enterprises have tended to show the least interest in maintaining minimum pay and good working conditions. Chinese non governmental organizations such as the All-China Women’s Federation and the Youth Federation, along with international ones such as the Asia Foundation and Oxfam Hong Kong, are increasingly involved in welfare, advice and rights education work with Chinese migrant workers.

Links with home
Migrants endure hardship to send money to their families or save for their futures. If successful they may earn in a month what they would receive in a year working on the land. Although some rural migrants dream of settling down in the cities, for the majority it is too difficult. Some settle in smaller cities and towns which allow long-term settlement for migrants who meet economic criteria, such as having a permanent job or buying their own apartment. Other migrants go home to get married. Afterwards, if earning opportunities at home are scarce, one or both spouses may ‘go out’ again, leaving any child for grandparents to care for. Migration takes an essentially circular form, in which migrants move between rural and urban areas but regard the village as home. As older migrants settle back in the villages, younger ones take their place in the urban workforce. Migrant-exporting provinces such as Sichuan have sometimes raised the complaint that they function as nurseries and old people’s homes, producing labourers whose productive years are spent elsewhere. More recently, some migrants have begun to settle permanently in the destination areas. In general, however, big cities resist granting permanent residence to incomers unless they are highly qualified or exceptionally wealthy.
Impact on the rural areas
Large-scale migration has both negative and positive effects on the rural areas. Age and gender ratios in the sending areas are distorted. There is a lack of people in their early twenties in some villages, while in others it is mainly men who are missing. Many children grow up with absent fathers. Others are brought up by their grandparents because both parents are working away. Old people and women have heavier farm work burdens.
On the positive side, migrants send remittances and bring back knowledge and capital. Knowing that they will return one day, migrants maintain close contact with their families. Remittances increase the disposable income of farming families: they are invested in new housing, education and small enterprises, thus raising living standards in the villages. Returning migrants may set up building firms, tailoring shops, restaurants, or other small businesses in the sending areas, using skills, entrepreneurial know-how, and contacts acquired during their time as a migrant. Migrants influenced by urban lifestyles also bring back new ideas. They press for electricity, running water and improved sanitation and introduce new technology such as the use mobile phones into the area. They understand life beyond the village, have smaller families and attempt to improve their children’s life chances through education.
Recent developments - the impact of recession
China’s export industries, in which so many migrants work, are inevitably vulnerable to international recession. As world trade began to slow in the last months of 2008, many factories in the previously vibrant coastal areas closed down. In February 2009 it was estimated that 20 million migrant workers who had returned to their villages for Chinese New Year would be staying there. They had been laid off and had despaired of finding another job. It was feared that the knock-on effects would be falling living standards in the countryside as remittances dried up. Children would be pulled out of school and house-building postponed. Young people who thought that they had escaped the drudgery and boredom of village life for ever would be angry and depressed at their enforced return. Those who still sought jobs as migrant labourers would be willing to accept even lower wages. There was even speculation that political stability could be affected.
In fact the recession seems to have had limited impact. Some incidents in which aggrieved workers demonstrated or rioted have been reported but these have been small-scale and scattered. Migrants may be angry or frustrated but they lack organization and the fact that when unemployed they have to return to their home villages, makes concerted action difficult. Moreover, job loss does not mean destitution. Most have some personal savings – the savings rate among Chinese workers is impressively high. Their landholdings in their rural homes also provide some security.
The Chinese government was of course anxious to mitigate the negative effects of the recession. The central government instructed local government to set up training and job creation schemes for the unemployed. The major sending provinces have increased provision for migrant training courses - Guangxi Province for example has allocated $35 million to free education for migrants. Other provinces have put millions into start-up loans for migrant businesses. The central government has also attempted to stimulate domestic demand as a substitute for export demand and to create jobs wherever possible. However, there is a limit to what can be done for China’s migrant labourers. Their jobs were created by the export boom and until the recession in world trade eases their employment is not likely to recover its former levels.

Delia Davin (Emeritus Professor of Chinese Studies) taught Chinese economic history at the University of York and Chinese development at the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Leeds. She retired in 2004 but is still a regular visitor to China and continues to write and do research.
References
Chan, A. (2001) China’s Workers under Assault: The Exploitation of Labor in a Globalizing Economy. Armonk, NY: Sharpe.
Davin, D. (2004) Internal Migration in Contemporary China. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Gaetano, A. M. and T.a Jacka (eds) (2004) On the Move: Women and Rural-to-Urban Migration in Contemporary China. New York: Columbia University Press.
Jacka, T. (2006) Rural Women in Urban China: Gender, Migration, and Social Change. Armonk, NY: Sharpe.
Murphy, R. (2002) How Migrant Labor is Changing Rural China. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Solinger, D. J. (1999) Contesting Citizenship in Urban China: Peasant Migrants, the State, and the Logic of the Market. Berkeley: University of California Press.