Rural migrants in urban labor market in China and socio-economic disparities

Renata Thiebaut

Chinese Society

December, 3rd, 2008



Rural migrants in urban labor market in China and
socio-economic disparities


After the Mao era, there was a rupture with the old thought of "life-time"
job and this brought more competitiveness in the labor market. As
consequence, workers especially from the rural area would go in search of
better jobs and quality of life in better labor markets.
The author John Giles exampled the changes the labor market faced toward
the economic development using the words: "Implicit lifetime employment
was replaced by massive layoffs, widespread unemployment, forced early
retirements, and frequent failure to provide promised wage, pension and
health-care benefits" (Giles, John, Albert Park, and Fang Cai. "How Has
economic restructuring affected China's Urban Workers?" China Quarterly,
no. 185 (2003): 61-95, pp. 526).
Indeed, the migration is a problem of any country that is facing
development. Sao Paulo, for instance, an industrialized and modern city,
faced and still faces a great mobility of people mostly from Northeast of
Brazil, a rural area. The city didn't have structure to comport so many
people and became one of the world's most populated cities. Among
innumerable consequences, Sao Paulo started to face problems with housing,
unemployment and deterioration of the social welfare.
Like Sao Paulo, Chinese cities such as Shanghai, Beijing, among other
developed ones, faced an inflow of rural migrants as well. And unlikely
Brazil, China established a migration policy in order to control the
problem of the labor market in the urban areas.
The hukou system, or household registration, was set up in 1958. It faced
some changes along the years but it truly became a tool of the Government
to control the rural migration in the big cities despite of having as main
objective the promotion of social order, rights and benefits.
Members of urban or rural persons must register at a local security office
as legal permanent residents and this way, the citizens could easier
acquire the benefits of social policies locally.
It's also possible for a rural migrant to obtain a hukou in an urban city,
but he/she has to fulfill harsh preconditions especially to have a job
offer before moving to the city that can provide a certificate of
sponsorship or letter of invitation of the school or university (this one
for students).
Even with all of the efforts of controlling a massive migration to urban
areas, rural workers without hukou still want to try a new life in big
cities, accepting temporary jobs, especially in the civil construction and
other industries that require labor-intensive force without the necessity
of high education and skill. They go where they see they can have job
opportunities and if it's needed, they move from city to city.
The migration wave is resulted from the rural-urban disparities. Workers
leave places where incomes are low and job opportunities are scarce and
move to places where incomes are higher or jobs seem plentiful.
One may think that it would be needed to control the informal labor market
and prohibit companies to hire rural migrants without hukou, but the
"Enforcement of laws and regulations that aim to protect labor rights is
notoriously weak" (Litao, Zhao. "Labor Market Reforms under the Hu-Wen
Administration", pp. 467) since companies hire workers illegally for low
costs; and workers accept low wages, long work hours without contract,
insurance or social security; all of them covered by the lack of
supervision of the authorities.
Despite of the increasing social reforms the Government makes in the
countryside, the imbalance between rural and urban areas are a crucial
motive for rural migrants to accept poor labor conditions in big cities.
And this makes clear that the conditions in the rural areas are far from
expected.
The massive rural migration is one consequence of the economic development
process in the past years in China since the open-up policy and the rupture
with the life time job. If in one hand the rapid development brings huge
surpluses and economic growth for certain regions, in the other hand,
brings the chaos of the rural-urban migration.
The hukou system was one policy implemented by China to also control the
migration, but it fails to achieve this objective. It does restrain rural
migrants to have resident permit but do not eliminate the mobility.
A solution to the rural-urban migration is to equilibrate the social
welfare and labor market in both rural and urban areas. It's true that this
process takes time to be fixed but it's more efficient to eliminate the
problem from its origins than to try to contour it from years to years.

References
Zhao, Litao (2006). "Labor market reforms under Hu-Wen Administration". In
Wong J. and Lai, H. (Eds.), China into the Hu-Wen Era (pp. 351-378).
Singapore: World scientific Press.

Bray, David. (2005). "Social Space and Governance in Urban China: The
Danwei System from Origin to Reform". 157-193.

Hsing, You-tien (Sep. 2006). "Land and territorial politics in Urban
China". China Quarterly (187), 575-591

Giles, John, Albert Park, and Fang Cai. "How Has economic restructuring
affected China's Urban Workers?" China Quarterly, no. 185 (2003): 61-95.