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For the purpose of this paper, we are going to concentrate on certain commonalities found among the blue collar urban migrants or urban migrants in the labor force or service industry. However, even with narrowing the definition, this paper is not to be considered comprehensive or exhaustive. As with any generalization there are numerous exceptions.
Legal Limbo
For urban migrants the legal limbo in which they live and operate seems to frame or bookend the entire migrant experience. At the front end is the hukou system. This seems to be the starting point for many of the challenges faced by migrants (whether economic, social or family). At the other end of the variety of experiences is the lack of an understanding of the law or access to legal aid by urban migrants to effectively navigate the challenges they face.
The driver behind the kind of ambiguity in which China sometimes chooses to operate, regardless of where ambiguity is found, can add another layer of complexity. The motives for not addressing the ambiguity can range from a conscious decision to not afford an individual or group of individuals their rights, to a desire to simply avoid a problem which those in authority are not sure how to handle. Or perhaps it is simply that they fear making a mistake. These factors are not exclusive to issues related to urban migrants, but can play into a broad range of decision making processes within the culture.
Legal Limbo Bookend of Hukous
China identifies its citizens with a household registration system called the hukou. This is China’s policy of residential registration in which a person is registered in the area in which he or she was born. This registration entitles them to receive social services like healthcare, housing, employment and free public education in their specific registered area. The policy, enacted in 1958, enabled China’s planned economy to adequately handle the needs of each region. With China’s move to a market economy, when migrants relocate to urban areas, they are obligated to maintain their rural hukou. The rural hukou prevents migrants from accessing the various social and educational services and other opportunities in their new urban residence. Migrants may not anticipate restrictions they will encounter when they enter an urban area until after they have left the countryside and arrived in the cities. The effect of the hukou is passed on to each child even if born in an urban area. Every child is awarded the same hukou as that of the birth mother.
Economic Realities
Poverty
Generally the driver behind migration is poverty and the hope for a better life. And so, from the beginning the migrant population in most instances is already challenged by poverty, and all too often they only exchange a life of rural poverty for a life of urban poverty in an unfamiliar environment. As you look at the social network in which migrants live, many are in precarious inancial states, and there are few resources available to assist them.
Upon arriving in an urban setting, the potential for going deeper into poverty is very real for the urban migrant. If a migrant family faces a health crisis, death of a wage earner or even a lay off, it can significantly affect their economic well-being for years to come. In a worst case scenario, there are instances of people coming to an urban center out of financial desperation who are not able to find jobs and then do not have the money to buy a train ticket to return to their home.Their situation then becomes even more desperate.
Transition to an Urban Labor Force
Most migrants arrive in an urban center with little education and few skills. They anticipate securing a job that will require little beyond their dedicated effort and consistent attendance. Even before the economic downturn, there was much competition for these jobs and those with skills had an advantage. Over the last six months to a year, many of the once-thriving factories have shut down and turned many of their workers out. Some of the migrants chose to go home to their villages, but their return often creates disputes and conflicts over rural land. Other unemployed urban migrants (literally, tens of millions) who do not want to or can not go back to their hometowns or villages literally carry their belongings with them daily as they look for new work. For most of these laborers the sheer hard work that served them until now does not prepare them for what they face in the labor market today. China is at the threshold of needing to launch a new economic growth model. Along with that, China is in the midst of a significant shift in the kind of labor needed. “Governments at all levels in China are unprepared, because for more than a decade, they have always believed that the world demand for Chinese factories could only increase and not decrease; and even if the migrant workers lost their employment, they had a piece of land waiting for them at home, hence there was no need to worry about social problems brought about by large numbers of them stranded in the city.” (8) In reality, the demand for Chinese factories has decreased considerably and many migrants do not have the option of returning to their piece of land.
Pensions
Migrant workers are very transient, looking for work and moving not only from city to city, but across province lines as well. However, when they make those moves, whether out of necessity or by choice, those who have pensions are often not permitted to transfer their pension accounts to another province. Instead, they are forced to withdraw their funds and open new accounts whenever they move. However, in doing this they incur a significant penalty when closing a pension account. They “lose part of their savings, as the higher contributions made by their previous employers would remain with respective local governments. A new proposal would eliminate this obstacle and allow them the freedom to transfer their funds. The Economic Observer Online learned that the reform draft, which aimed to resolve the above problem and better protect the workers’ right, would be made public early (in) 2009.” (9)
Social Stigmas
Discrimination
Overwhelmingly, the general attitudes of non-migrant urban dwellers toward migrants tend to move along varying degrees of disdain as well as laying blame for urban problems at their feet. Overcrowding, disease, crime and unemployment are consistently seen as problems caused by the migrant influx. Discrimination not only limits migrants to horizontal mobility, but affectively excludes them from vertical mobility in the job market. This discrimination stretches out to many areas of life in the urban setting.
In addition, city governments view the migrants as problematic in meeting the related infrastructure and social needs, but a necessary evil. Cheap labor provided my migrants from poorer inland provinces has largely driven China’s economic boom. Yet urban governments often blame migrants for crime and other social problems. For example, note this recent comment by an official in southern China, “Guangzhou has long suffered from a poor public security situation because of burglary, robbery, theft and many other crimes, many of them committed by the migrant population,” said Su Baoling, a local official.” (10)
Discrimination of Migrant Women
Historically, Chinese culture has generally viewed women as second class citizens, having fewer rights or privileges than men. Add to this the status or lack of status as a migrant, and migrant women become nearly invisible. They are easy targets for many kinds of abuse and mistreatment. “Migrant women workers tend to be naive and unassertive, leaving them more vulnerable to sexual harassment and personal abuse than local women.” (11) Females are often at risk for being lured into human trafficking and exploitation. Once ensnared, there are few agencies and services in place to rescue these women and offer real solutions.
Even when gainfully employed, migrant women continue to have challenges that urban women generally do not face. The Committee for Asian Women notes that some factories have rules that orce a woman to resign if she marries. (12) According to the China Business Review, “China's Labor Law guarantees women workers maternity leave and protection for their reproductive ealth. Yet the country's vast pool of cheap labor makes it tempting if not easy for some employers to refuse to pay maternity leave or simply to fire women workers when they become pregnant.
 Working Conditions
The working conditions that migrants face on a daily basis are sometimes harsh. The jobs they willingly accept can be dirty, degrading and dangerous. “Many workers suffer illnesses due to overwork. Workers face many obstacles to maintain their health: the harsh policies of no sick leave and restriction of using toilets, high medical expenses charged by both private and public hospitals, etc.” (13)
In many factories, the working conditions and environment are harmful to women's health, particularly in the footwear and garment factories. The chemical fumes, extreme heat, and long hours of standing not only affect women's general physical health but are also detrimental to their reproductive health.” (14) It is not just women who struggle and suffer in these conditions, but men as well.
These factors coupled with the long work hours, makes life as a migrant very difficult. “In Export Processing Zones workers work from 12 to 14 hours per day. In times of rush orders, it is not unusual for workers to work from 8am to 10pm, and in some cases they may work until 2am. Many workers only have one or two days off per month, and some none at all.” (15) In instances where these kinds of conditions exist, the urban migrant laborers have little knowledge of the labor code. Even if they did and they attempted to exercise their rights, factory management would deny those rights, ignore their pleas, or threaten to take their jobs.
Segregation
The hukou system acts as a welcomed protective barrier for the urban residents who don’t want to share the social services afforded urban residents or want their children’s schools to accept migrants. While there are instances where the lives of migrants and locals intersect, very little is currently done to pro-actively assimilate or integrate migrants into the urban culture and community. In fact, quite to the contrary, there are instances of urban residents taking action to insure that migrants will not infringe on the lives of the urban population. There are also instances of urban migrants who have chosen to segregate themselves from urban residents. Yet the primary driver behind the segregation whether imposed or chosen is economic. Because they can not afford little else, urban migrants are forced into sub-standard housing or a migrant camp, and their children forced out of traditional public education. In the worst case scenario the result is ‘urban villages’ which, according to Ma Li, leads to “segmented assimilation” that perpetuates poverty. These urban villages are often infested with negative environmental and social factors, high unemployment, low aspiration and family breakdowns. The second generation living here, seeking education and upward mobility, are infused with the negative factors that weigh them down and discourage social and professional
progress (16).
Other driving factors that reinforce segregation are migrant established economies, communities, and even social security networks. Migrants to urban areas of China often establish their own self-sustaining communities and economies, some more positive than others, but all establishing an environment out of which the migrant may never feel the need to leave. If a major crisis of some sort arises in an individual migrant’s life, he or she will turn to those in that community who have migrated from their home village, area or province to provide the needed assistance. In many instances the people from those communities respond to the need.
A good example is a situation for a migrant man from Luoyang, Henan province. Two or three young ladies from Luoyang had come to work in Beijing several years earlier. The girls came to Beijing simply wanting a good job, but one got lured into prostitution. After this girl was arrested, the man from Luoyang was contacted by the other girls to provide some help for the imprisoned girl. They wanted the man to pay the prison so that they would give her a little better food and some warm clothes for the winter while in prison. As much disgust as the man had for the decisions the girl from his home town had made, he still felt obligated, as the only male from her home town who was in Beijing and whom she knew, to give the prison guards several months worth of his own income to simply help her get a little better food and some warm clothes. Regardless of the rightness or the wrongness of the obligation this migrant felt, this kind of home town loyalty (or perhaps better termed “responsibility”) is not uncommon. This illustrates how deeply embedded the sense of community that often exists among migrants from the same home town or region is, and how that then drives the segregation migrants sometimes choose. If we are honest with ourselves and not unlike other areas of the world, we have to also acknowledge that there is regretfully socio-economic segregation and plenty of room for integration within the church in China as well. While there are instances of diverse socioeconomic groups worshipping together in China, it has not been the norm. This article is the first of a two-part series taken from "The Moving Population: An Introduction to the Urban Migrants of Modern China," a white paper commissioned by ChinaSource and written by Brenda Reid and Myron Youngman of The Kaifa Group, Inc. and now sold as a part of the Urban Migrant Toolkit. For information on receiving the complete white paper contact
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