The working and living conditions of college-educated rural migrants in China

In the past one and a half decades, Chinese cities have witnessed an influx of college-educated rural migrants. Until now, there has been little systematic research on the working and living conditions of this growing population. The objective of this paper is to empirically examine similarities and differences in living conditions between college-educated rural migrants, non-college-educated rural migrants, and local urban workers. The data are from the 2010 National Health and Family Planning Commission Survey of China’s migrant population. Our study has produced several findings. First, the monthly income of college-educated rural migrants is significantly higher than that of non-college-educated rural migrants and is similar to that of college-educated local urban workers. However, less-educated rural migrants earn more than local urban workers with similar levels of education. Second, while college-educated rural migrants work fewer hours than non-college-educated rural migrants, they work longer hours than their local urban counterparts. Third, local urban workers receive greater social benefits than college-educated rural migrants, whose benefits are better than those of non-college-educated rural migrants. Overall, while college-educated rural migrants enjoy more favourable working and living conditions than non-college-educated rural migrants, they remain disadvantaged when compared to urban workers with a similar level of education. These findings highlight the insurmountable institutionalised exclusion and discrimination that imposes significant barriers on rural-origin people to reap the benefits of higher education.     

Family education support to rural migrant children in China: evidence from Shenzhen

Rural migrant children have become a fast-growing population in China as a consequence of the large-scale population flow from rural to urban areas. Besides the dual-structure hukou system, which restrains rural migrants from upward mobility, family capital also plays an important role in providing family educational support to rural migrant children. Using the data from P District and N District of Shenzhen in 2013, this paper explores the present status of three dimensions of family capital and five aspects of family educational support to Chinese rural migrant children, as well as the correlation between family capital and family educational support from perspectives of migration status (hukou), life course (children’s age), and school type. Constrained by inadequate family capital in multiple dimensions manifested by less education, lower income, and limited social networks, etc., parents of rural migrant children provide less family educational support in nearly every aspect compared with parents of urban local children. Among rural migrant children, those in private migrant schools receive the least support from their parents.     

SOCIAL CAPITAL AND WORK AMONG RURAL-TO-URBAN MIGRANTS IN CHINA

This research provides a fine-grained analysis of the link between social capital and work-related outcomes among rural-to-urban migrants in China. Using data from the Shanghai Rural-to-Urban Migrant Worker Survey, the authors examine various kinds of social networks, the types of social capital they produce and their effects on migrant workers. While kinship networks and pre-existing social capital tend to provide migrants with job security and stability, they are negatively associated with migrants’ earnings and work satisfaction. By contrast, newly established friendship networks with local urbanites indicate new forms of social capital from the destination city, which are positively associated with higher satisfaction with income and work environment, and a higher likelihood of landing a permanent job.     

Return migration in China: a case study of Zhumadian in Henan province

This paper examines the causes and process of return migration from the coastal region to the inland provinces in China since the early 2010s, based on the case study of Zhumadian city in Henan Province. Surveys administered to both rural migrants from Zhumadian to Shenzhen and recent returnees to Zhumadian are presented. Industrial relocation and the development of inland provinces trigger the current wave of return migration. Family obligations, better prospects of the hometown, and barriers to settle in Shenzhen because of the hukou system are the principal reasons to return. Most of the migrants return to work in a factory or start a business. Some migrants purchase apartments in Zhumadian as a prelude to returning and starting a business at a future date. Returnees prefer settling down in urban areas rather than in their rural origins. In light of the empirical findings, the authors argue that return migration will ease the mismatch of labor supply and demand between the inland and coastal provinces, such that the Lewis Turning Point has not been reached yet. The continuing process of rural migrants returning to and settling down in Zhumadian suggests a way to achieve some of the goals in China’s new-type urbanization plan, as local governments may address the two major challenges of the plan, namely, local job creation and financing for increased demand for public services.     

Emerging Chinese Role in Shaping St. Petersburg's Urban Landscape: Interscalar Investment Strategies in the Development of a Residential Megaproject

The paper, by an American geographer, discusses the origin and development of a Chinese-financed residential megaproject (Baltic Pearl) located southwest of St. Petersburg's historical district. Viewing Baltic Pearl as reportedly the largest investment project undertaken outside China by a government-sponsored Chinese consortium, the author places it in the context of state-level Sino-Russian relations and Russian unease over the influx of Chinese migrants and culture. Reflecting the author's extensive field work in St. Petersburg and Shanghai, the focus of the paper is on the way the consortium was forced to adopt interscalar (i.e., both state and municipal/urban) strategies responsive to local conditions, providing a potentially useful precedent and model for Chinese and other investors seeking to penetrate Russia's urban markets.     

From left-behind children to young migrants: the intergenerational social reproduction of rural migrant labor in China

ABSTRACT

Growing in number in the last two decades, rural migrant workers in China have completed intergenerational replacement, and young migrants have become a principal part of the migrant population. However, the process of such intergenerational reproduction has not been thoroughly examined. Based on field studies in the Chinese countryside, this paper analyzes the mechanisms of intergenerational reproduction of rural migrants from the perspective of rural communities, families, and school education. “Left-behind” rural communities, their migration-oriented social culture, and the cognition of rural–urban differences as constructed through migrant parents facilitated a subjective willingness for migration among left-behind children. Exclusion from urban-biased rural education is often the final external thrust for their migration. Having finished the transition, the households of a new young generation of rural migrants are experiencing a different crisis of reproduction. This paper argues that there is a systematic rupture between labor, households, and rural society and that this presents a critical development trap for China.     

我国大学生就业城市选择意愿及其影响因素分析

引导大学生合理的就业流动是促进各类城市协调发展的有效途径。本文以不同类型的就业城市为研究对象,通过全国7个城市的1600余份调查问卷,利用多项Logit模型分析了我国大学生就业城市的选择意愿及影响因素。研究表明,大学生倾向以自身生源地为界限对劳动市场的地域进行二元划分,职业发展机遇和家庭因素在就业地的选择中最为重要,地区特质和自然生态环境的影响最弱,生源地和个人观念都与就业地的选择显著相关。在此基础上提出引导大学生就业流动的政策建议。     

从异化到共鸣：旅游小企业主移民向往的生活

以喜洲旅游小企业主移民为例,从异化与共鸣理论视角探析旅游小企业主移民地理流动背后的深层动力机制。研究发现,喜洲旅游小企业主移民以地理流动作为重新组织个人工作与生活的契机,尝试改变自我与外部世界的关系,以抵抗自我在现代社会中的时间、空间、行动与物界方面的异化。尽管物理空间上的迁移使得他们断离了以往生活中的种种异化现象,在乡村生活中与自然世界、物质世界与社会世界的共鸣中获得了幸福感与认同感。然而社会空间上的连结、社会体制的内化与现代生活惯习的延续让他们无法做到真正意义上脱离异化。同时,乡村旅游目的地的现代化进程也使得旅游小企业主移民被动进入社会“再异化”的循环。异化与共鸣的多面性使得旅游小企业主移民的迁移过程形成了多层异化与共鸣的生活实践。     

‘They shut them out the road’: Migration,mental health and the Scottish highlands

There is a small literature tackling migration and mental health, but less is said about the migration of people with mental health problems (incipient or diagnosed). The present paper considers what might be claimed about such migration, particularly when entailing movement into rural and remote areas where lack of anonymity, high social visibility and certain differences in how ‘locals’ and ‘incomers’ are treated may have serious consequences for those displaying psychological and behavioural differences. Drawing upon qualitative evidence from in‐depth interviewing of in‐migrants with mental health problems living in the Scottish Highlands, light is thrown on the connections between their problems and the decision to relocate to this predominantly rural region. Attention also focuses on dissonances between expectations regarding their new situation and their actual experiences of it in terms of both natural landscapes and, more importantly here, social milieux. There are further implications for changing regional attitudes towards mental health, suggesting certain impacts that arise not just from the in‐migration of people themselves who have mental health problems, but also from the ideas and practices that they often carry with them.     

旅游企业与旅游消费者心理契约的维度及其关系——基于8城市调查数据的实证研究

在回顾国内外心理契约研究成果的基础上,本文自制心理契约调查问卷,在成都、西安、昆明、重庆、深圳、杭州、上海和北京8个城市,针对在酒店、旅行社、餐饮等40家旅游企业中消费的1000名旅游消费者展开调查,旨在探讨旅游企业与旅游消费者之间的心理契约的维度及其关系。运用SPSS统计分析软件,对问卷的两个部分——＂旅游企业责任＂和＂旅游消费者责任＂分别进行探索性因子分析和验证性因子分析,证实了旅游企业与旅游消费者心理契约是由交易型契约和关系型契约构成的二维结构的理论假设。最后,运用多元回归分析方法,分析了旅游企业与旅游消费者心理契约的两个维度之间的相互关系。     

In-migration and diphtheria mortality among children in the Sundsvall region during the epidemics of the 1880s

While many works have examined urban mortality rates in nineteenth-century Europe, much less attention has been placed on disease patterns in the peripheral areas surrounding these population centers. This study demonstrates that during the Swedish diphtheria epidemic of the early 1880s, mortality rates among children living in the industrial parishes on the outskirts of the town of Sundsvall exceeded those found in the town itself. The epidemic was fueled by the mass in-migration of laborers and their families from distant provinces who sought work in the region's sawmills. Thus, in contrast to the common pattern of disease entering through a port city and spreading into the interior, in this case diphtheria followed the paths of migrants through the rural parishes of the Sundsvall region to the sawmills and then finally into the town itself. This spatial pattern was reversed in the late fall when migrants returned home. Conflicts within the medical profession regarding how best to prevent or contain diphtheria, popular suspicion and distrust of local physicians, and the introduction of the disease into a population with no prior contact with it, all helped increase the number of young corpses.     

Debt‐Bonded Brick Kiln Workers and Their Intent to Return: Towards a Labour Geography of Smallholder Farming Persistence in Cambodia

Despite the increasing preponderance of non‐farm work in Cambodia, labour migrants across a range of working conditions remain linked to their rural homesteads through durable financial and social arrangements. This article explores this phenomenon through the case of debt‐bonded brick kiln workers in Phnom Penh, formerly smallholder farmers in villages. Drawing on the field of labour geography, the article first examines the process by which labourers became debt‐bonded, thus situating them within the country’s broader agrarian transition and recasting peasants as rural labour. It then explores workers’ perceptions of rural life, suggesting that the unfreedom of kiln work, contrasted with the fixedness and potential for mobility in rural life, makes workers aspire to return to their land. The article ultimately highlights how the persistence of smallholder farmers can be understood as an issue of poor work under neoliberalism in Cambodia, and draws light on the agency of labour in understanding this.     

Sites of Assimilation into Urban Life: Rural Migrants' Clubs in Haifa under the Mandate, 1939–48

Culture clubs and social associations were a common social setting in Palestinian towns and in some large villages during the Mandate period. Drawing on a micro-historical approach, this article focuses on four organisations established in Haifa by rural migrants. These organisations are examined as sites of assimilation in the city and they are used as a vantage point from which to observe the daily life experience of their members. The findings suggest that clubs and associations were not only a setting for sports and cultural activities, social gathering or charity. They were an arena for public activity where rural migrants negotiated their position in urban society and participated in developing Palestinian culture.     

中国女性农民工务工活跃度研究——基于全国29省份调查数据与陕西省实证研究

基于全国范围内(除京沪港澳台地区)女性农民工外出务工调查数据,提出女性农民工务工活跃度新概念,并将该概念分解为四个活跃度因子:务工距离、务工时间、务工地点数以及务工频数,用层次分析法得出各因子的权重并计算各省市区的活跃度。引入对应各省市区农民人均纯收入进行回归分析,与多项式模型拟合较好,活跃度随农民人均纯收入的减小而有增大的趋势。分别对四个活跃度因子的地理空间分布进行研究,运用聚类分析法进一步探究务工活跃度结合农民人均纯收入在地理空间上的分布特征,并在全国范围内划分出7个区域类型。最后以陕西省为例,用Logistic回归模型得出女性农民工的个人、家庭及其他因素对务工活跃度有较大影响。     

Female Migration and Urban Labour Markets in Tianjin

The spontaneous, large-scale population movement from the countryside to the cities witnessed in China since the early 1980s has drawn increasing attention in academic circles. However, research has tended to focus on quantitative macro-level data collection and interpretation rather than on the experiences of those involved in the migratory process. Using qualitative research methods, this article presents the experiences and perceptions of the Chinese rural female migrants as narrated by themselves. It attempts to identify by this means the major forces behind rural women's out-migration and the institutional changes and structural barriers that have shaped women's lives and experiences in the migratory process. The author argues that women are actors and agents in this unprecedented economic and social transformation. Through their active engagement in the urban labour market, female migrants have challenged both the traditionally defined gender roles and the spatial and socio-economic boundaries that have been structurally designated to them. Their actions may catalyse a radical rearrangement of the social, political and sexual orders.     

THE URBAN–RURAL GAP IN UNIVERSITY ATTENDANCE: DETERMINANTS OF UNIVERSITY PARTICIPATION AMONG CANADIAN YOUTH

Based on existing work, there are clear differences in the incidence of degree holders across the urban–rural hierarchy in favor of large urban areas. In large part, this gradient can be traced to the higher probability of obtaining a degree among residents of larger urban centers. Utilizing data from the Youth in Transition Survey (YITS), this paper explores factors that may account for university participation among Canadian youth. It asks whether this difference is due to local access to universities, family characteristics (e.g., parental income, education, and immigrant status), and local labor market characteristics that may increase the incentive for urban youth to attend university.     

制度对于区域产业发展的影响研究——上海与深圳高科技产业发展比较

制度决定了交易成本,对于经济增长至关重要。产权确定了人与人之间使用稀缺资源的相互关系。有效率的产权应该具有排他性,根据排他性的程度产权可以分为私有产权与公有产权。制度和产权的变迁具有路径依赖特性。政府在制度和产权安排方面具有几乎垄断性的优势。上海与深圳的高科技产业发展比较,支持和验证了以上理论假设和判断。上海的高科技产业具有更大的规模和更广的行业门类,而深圳的高科技产业则具有更强的技术创新能力和更好的经济绩效。前者归咎于上海长期以来雄厚的产业基础,而后者则显示出制度对于区域产业发展模式乃至绩效的影响。不同的制度文化背景决定了高科技产业发展的不同制度安排。制度安排上的差异进而导致两地高科技产业发展绩效不同。     

HEALTH SELECTION EFFECTS IN CHINA'S INTERNAL MIGRATION

Drawing data from the 2008 survey of Internal Migration and Health in China, we compare various health indicators among current rural-to-urban migrants, rural residents who never migrated, return migrants, and urban citizens. Two health-selective mechanisms, the healthy migrant hypothesis and the salmon bias hypothesis, are empirically tested. Results provide empirical support to both these hypotheses. After controlling for individual's age, sex, socioeconomic status and major health-related behaviours, current rural-to-urban migrants are still better off than rural residents who never migrated regarding their self-rated general health, chronic diseases, self-perceived physical discomfort and lung capacity. Current rural-to-urban migrants are also less likely to have chronic diseases or to report physical discomfort than return migrants. Except for self-reported chronic diseases and abnormally high heart rate, there is no significant difference between rural-to-urban migrants and urban residents regarding the health measures used in this study.     

Neither predator nor prey: What trafficking discourses miss about masculinities,mobility and work

Within trafficking discourses, men appear as predatory and exploitative, while boys appear as victims. This flattens the complexities of social life and obscures the ways that constructs of masculinity frame the trajectories of labour migrants and their brokers. This article challenges those discourses, drawing on research with two groups of labour migrants characterized as ‘victims of trafficking’, as well as with ‘traffickers’ who help them to move and work. The first are adolescents moving from Benin to the gravel quarries of Abeokuta, Nigeria. The second are adults from across West Africa who have made the illegal journey to Italy, where they live in ‘ghettos’ and work as gang labourers on harvests. In each case, migrants and their brokers come from the same or similar communities; (shared) ideals of masculinity structure their mobility and labour. Gendered transitions towards adulthood, the pressure to attain riches and status and a duty of responsibility to those younger and less successful are important. A focus on their masculinities takes us beyond ‘victim-perpetrator’ dyads.     

The origins of assisted British migrants to Queensland 1871–1892

The aim of the present government is to encourage the introduction of emigrants from the mother country and failing this from the continent of Europe (The Queensland Treasurer, 1875). This article examines the origins of British migrants to Queensland between 1871 and 1892, a period when the government assisted over 150,000 British migrants to the colony. At first most assisted migrants came from industrial-urban areas and, except those from Ireland, had limited knowledge of rural life. In the 1880s the government canvassed the agricultural counties of eastern England to attract farm workers. Consequently, these areas became major source regions for assisted emigrants. Many assisted migrants, however, still had limited experience of rural life and on arrival in the colony preferred either to live in town or to move south. Despite these failures sufficient numbers of assisted British migrants remained to ensure the growth of the colony's agricultural economy.