China's new generation of migrant workers
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Liu has no intention of going back to live in his hometown. In Shanghai there are huge numbers of migrant workers, like Liu, who grew up in cities and are accustomed to city life. Moreover, more and more of those who grew up in rural areas also want to stay in the city permanently.
Jiangsu Province official Cao Bingtai points to a recent study in which 15 percent of young migrants said that they would never under any circumstances leave the city to live in their hometowns. It shows that the new generation has adapted to life in the cities and is unwilling to return to rural life.
Demand for equal access to public services
What migrant workers and their families want most of all is equal access to education, medical treatment and employment, and official household registration.
For migrant workers, educating their children is still a major problem. Wei Ping, who has a young child, says, "My child was born in Shanghai and is six years old. But the quality of education in schools for children of migrant workers is not good. And it's impossible to send the child to a local school unless you have a certificate proving you own a property in the city." She and her husband can afford to live in Shanghai, but are far from having enough money to buy an apartment.
If these kinds of issues are not resolved there is a danger that people will start to return to the villages. Urbanization will go into reverse which would be against the trend of normal social development.
The government of Kunshan City in Jiangsu Province is trying to address some of the problems. The city Education Bureau has ruled that children of migrants can attend local state schools if their parents have stable jobs and obey family planning policies. Migrants who have owned property and paid pension contributions and medical insurance for more than three years, or have signed contracts with enterprises, are allowed to change their household registration. Around 10,000 migrants eligible under these rules register as Kunshan residents each year.
New migrant workers: we're not farmers any more
Although Yuan Fenglin was already well off in her hometown in Anhui, the 24-year-old chose to look for work in Kunshan. Talking about her move, she said, "I wanted to learn more about the world while I'm still young; earning money wasn't the main reason for moving."
Another difference with the older generation is that new migrants are less concerned about how much they earn than what they can learn about the outside world from life in the city.
A recent poll showed that 54.2 percent of the new generation of migrant workers left for the city to broaden their outlook and for self-development, as against only 39.1 percent who were purely motivated by the prospect of earning money.
'I consider myself a worker'
Wei Qin comes from Weiyao Village in Anhui but works in a medical equipment factory in the city of Wuxi in Jiangsu. She doesn't think of herself as a farmer, as her life is no different from that of other workers. Her basic salary is 1,000 yuan per month but when business is good she can earn 5,000 to 6,000 yuan per month. "I consider myself a worker now. Even if I went back to my hometown someday, I wouldn't know how to farm the land."
Most of the new generation of migrant workers have lost their identity as farmers. In a poll of 2,500 migrant workers in manufacturing and construction, only 8.7 percent thought of themselves as farmers, while 75 percent identified as workers.
The surveys reveal a new generation of migrant workers facing a contradiction between their aspirations and China's current social reality. They hope to merge into the general city population but still harbor doubts that it will be possible. A sense of being marginalized persists along with a weak sense of belonging to their adopted cities.
The chief of the Research Bureau of the Anhui Federation of Trade Unions, Zhao Zixi, says the modernization of Chinese society lies in urbanization, and urbanization means transforming farmers into city-dwellers. The question is, at what pace should the change take place? Too slow, and the process of urbanization will be obstructed. Too fast, and the cities will be unable to absorb the new residents. Both should be avoided.
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