Chapter 4 Chapter Three Chinese Peasants on the Move

The decade starting from the mid-1990s was a decade in which China's urban and rural economic and social structures underwent historic changes.The mobility of rural labor is perhaps the most dramatic part of the structural change. Over the past decade, migrant workers have continued to migrate on a large scale, but the context of the migration has changed.China's economy has stepped out of the stage of shortage economy and food and clothing. This is a good thing for the national economy, but it is not necessarily a good thing for agriculture and farmers.In the period of shortage economy, the demand for agricultural products is not a problem, the only worry is that they cannot be grown. Now the demand for agricultural products has become a problem that farmers must care about.In this decade, there have been reforms in the employment system of urban state-owned enterprises, large-scale layoffs and unemployment, which have never happened in the decades since the founding of New China.Many city governments have adopted measures such as "vacating cages and changing birds" to limit the employment of migrant workers.During this decade, migrant workers became the main force of industrialization and became an important part of supporting the daily operation of cities. However, there was a serious lag in integrating these new urban residents into urban social life.

In the past ten years, the situation of migrant workers has also changed a lot, and the composition of migrant workers is also constantly changing: some people have withdrawn from the ranks of migrant workers and returned to their hometowns, while newcomers are constantly joining; They have already married and had children; those who used to be small laborers have become skilled craftsmen, and some have even become contractors; the former babysitters have entered the commercial catering service industry;... In early 1995, from the end of the twelfth lunar month to the Spring Festival, we conducted interviews with 300 farmers in 12 villages in Anhui and Sichuan. During the Spring Festival of 2005, we returned to these 12 villages and revisited these 300 peasant households.

First of all, there are only a small number of people who stay stably in cities or places of origin.Secondly, according to the survey, some young people ten years ago continued to go out, and some did not go out anymore, mainly because of family reasons.Among the middle-aged people ten years ago, a small number still went out, and most of them successfully completed the intergenerational change—they no longer went out, but their children. On the one hand, economic development improves the welfare of the whole society, and on the other hand, it also improves people's desires.In many cases, in developing countries, the result of successful economic development may not be more satisfied people, but a decline in satisfaction.

We can see the difference in the new generation of migrant workers: most of them have graduated from high school or junior high school, and the life pressure they feel is obviously lower than that of their parents. Perhaps because of this, they have higher requirements for working conditions than their parents.The job expectations of the new generation of migrant workers: First of all, their salary requirements are often higher than those of their parents. They care more about the working environment, working conditions, and working hours. They are more concerned about their own prospects than their parents.

The problem of "shortage of migrant workers", if only in terms of quantity, I don't think it is a real problem.If the quantity shortage is really reached, doesn't it mean that China's industrialization and urbanization have been solved?But I think that in the discussion of the shortage of migrant workers, we should not only focus on the quantitative perspective, but introduce the qualitative perspective, which may help us better understand the current situation. Director Huang Huiping of the Dongguan Employment Bureau said to investors: Don’t regard the migrant workers who come here today with trolley bags as the same kind of people as the migrant workers who came here with woven bags back then.

The first is sedimentation in the flow.What exactly is precipitation?Having a relatively stable income counts as precipitation?Is there a more stable unit that counts as precipitation?Years outside count as precipitation?Moving the whole family out counts as precipitation?Handling account migration counts as precipitation?Buying commercial housing in the city counts as precipitation?Clearly, precipitation is defined differently and amounts to different amounts.But generally speaking, we have seen in the survey that no matter what definition is used, the number of people settled in the city is still relatively small.

Second is identity.We asked migrant workers a question: "Do you think you are a city or a rural person? What do your family and friends think?" During the survey, we found that most of the interviewees agree that they are farmers, almost without exception.Regardless of whether they are low-level migrant workers or high-level migrant workers, including corporate white-collar workers, small bosses, and even people who have already bought houses in the city, they all say that they are "farmers" with one voice.The reason they put forward was: we have no basic guarantee, no matter how long I have worked, as long as I no longer sign a contract with me, I will be nothing; people in the city will be taken care of if they are unemployed and laid off, and we are not considered laid off if we are unemployed. , No one cares about our unemployment.Investigators asked: People in the city will also be unemployed... They replied: People in the city have houses to live in, so they can slowly find a job. We have to spend money for food and lodging outside, and the pressure is great. Ten days and a half months can't find a job When I got to work, I panicked and had to go home.

I think this is not because the employability of migrant workers is too low.It is customary to say that migrant workers are "low-quality" and "difficult to find employment."In fact, employment decisions do not depend on a single indicator.Adaptability may come first in employment decisions.From a purely microscopic point of view, it seems to be linear. The higher the investment in education, the higher the human capital, and the more training received, the better the employment.But from a macro point of view, employment is subject to the demand structure. No matter how high your academic qualifications are, if there is no demand, your employment will be difficult.In fact, judging from the data, the employment rate of migrant workers is higher than that of urban residents, and the employability of migrant workers is not low.The problem lies in the vulnerability of migrant workers, and their ability to bear risks is too low.In terms of housing, if there is housing, if the cost of housing for migrant workers in the city can be reduced, it can reduce the living cost of living, increase the sense of security, and enable them to bear a longer job search time, thereby improving their ability to resist risks .In terms of the welfare system, if the city government not only undertakes the employment responsibility of urban laid-off and unemployed workers, but also assumes the employment responsibility of migrant workers and migrant workers who have made contributions in the city, and provides basic social security and subsistence allowances, it can also improve The ability of migrant workers to resist risks.

To solve these problems, the first thing is to cancel the institutional exclusion, and the isolation system or policy based on identity should be corrected.Second, the cost of urbanization should be reduced, including reducing employment costs and housing costs.Reducing employment costs includes truly implementing a development strategy that gives priority to employment, including implementing enterprise policies that are conducive to employment, and including not using unrealistic and advanced so-called "high technology" to prematurely replace labor-intensive technologies with capital-intensive technologies.To reduce living costs, diversified housing construction and housing operations should be allowed, the cost of public facilities should be reduced while ensuring that basic needs are met, and the cost of public services should be reduced without reducing service quality.

Associated with the long-term migratory flow of rural labor is the long-term separation of most floating family members. Relationship problems brought on by long-term separation.The first is family stability: According to our survey, marriages caused by going out were almost unheard of ten years ago, but five and ten years later, we heard more and more cases of divorce in rural areas.In the vast majority of cases, it is the migrant who initiates the divorce, regardless of the gender of the migrant.Secondly, the sexual troubles caused by long-term separation, as well as the resulting health threats, sexual harassment and sexual crimes, should attract more attention from scholars and governments.

"Left-behind" children's education.Many parents who are working and doing business abroad have talked to us about the education of their children at home.It may be that the party with a higher education goes out (obviously, a higher education is more beneficial when working abroad), and the party with a lower education stays at home. It may be that both parents go out and leave their children with grandparents (generation-separation education) , have a negative impact on children's education. "Grandpa and grandma can only ensure that the children will not be hungry or cold." Others are difficult to manage, and even the children do not know about it when they play games in Internet cafes every day.In addition to cultural education, emotional communication between parents and children may also cause problems due to long-term separation.The possible options for the parents are: either one of the parents goes home, or the child is taken out to school.Of course, the latter faces more costs. Rural old-age care problems brought about by rural labor force going out.Traditionally, the rural areas of China are family pensions and family pensions.If all the children go out to work, the old man can still work in the fields when he is healthy, but his pension problems will become prominent when he is old.The children have money to send back, and there is no problem with living expenses, but there is no one to take care of them, and they lack emotional comfort.In particular, the family relocation poses a challenge to the rural pension model. Can the family and family pension methods continue?Or need to establish a larger rural social pension system? Migrant workers do not see their prospects in the city, have no stable expectations, and lack a sense of security.In some countries of the European Union, there are clear regulations on foreign workers: as long as someone hires you, you will enjoy some minimum protection; if you have a stable job, pay taxes, abide by the law, and have no bad records within two years, you can enter A higher level of protection; in this way, after seven years (or several years) of hard work, you can enjoy almost all citizenship treatment, and you can even apply for citizenship of the country if you want.However, in the institutional arrangements of our cities, there is no stable prospect for migrant workers in cities.What's more, the relationship between our urban and rural areas and between regions is not the relationship between countries. In social life, institutional arrangements obviously affect people's behavior.In the process of urbanization, the behavior-oriented role of institutional arrangements that stabilize people's expectations should not be ignored. Without stable expectations, migrant workers have to pay higher costs.He doesn't know if he can stay in the city and for how long, so he has to make two living arrangements, use the little money in two places, maintain two houses, two sets of daily necessities, and make preparations To cope with two means of livelihood at any time, those who think too much should also consider participating in two sets of social security systems.What's more unfavorable is that the unstable prospect makes him have great investment concerns. He hesitates in material investment and hesitates in human investment, because he doesn't know whether the investment will have enough time to recover.Not only his own investment in skills training, but even in the education of his children, he has been undecided. Should they go to primary schools for migrant children that use nationally compiled textbooks, or regular urban schools that use unique textbooks?In terms of social interaction and social network, he also has to take into account the needs of two sets of life prospects at the same time, and cannot focus on adapting to urban economic life and social life.The long-term separation has brought problems to some families in terms of husband-wife relationship, children's education, and elderly support. Without stable expectations, society will also pay a higher cost.In the historical process of urbanization, a considerable part of the wage income that could have helped migrant workers gradually gain a foothold in the city was sent back to their hometown, and the new houses in their hometown may face depreciation in the process of urbanization; short-term behavior, human capital investment desire The lowering of social security is not conducive to improving the competitiveness of the economy and the overall quality of the people; the parallelization of urban and rural codes of conduct in the city increases the cost of urban operation, from maintaining traffic order to the difficulty of cracking down on the underground black economy; and so on. If the city does not regard migrant workers as its own people, it should not imagine that migrant workers can regard the city as their own city.Without institutional arrangements to stabilize expectations, it is difficult to expect constructive long-term behavior of migrant workers.