DESCRIPTIONS
OF WORKING PAPERS - No 6
Work and
Mobility
The papers
in this volume were originally presented at a series of migration
research workshops funded by the Japan Foundation in 1997 and 1998. The
workshops were organised by members of the Asia Pacific Migration
Research Network in the People's Republic of China and the Chinese
Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing and were held in a number of
regions in China.
The aim of the workshops was to bring together migration researchers
and officials, identify key issues in migration and ethnic relations
and develop priorities for research. This volume is one output of the
workshops. The first paper in this collection is both a methodological
outline and an interpretation of data gathered during a five-month
survey of migration patterns in eight villages from four provinces in
China.
Huang Ping and colleagues have begun to explore the ways that
rural-urban migration is changing both demographic structures and also
cultural expectations and awareness in China. Their five-month survey
concentrates on economic and social causes of migration, with an
emphasis on how gender, educational levels and economic factors
contribute to people's decisions to migrate. They find that for many
rural Chinese, migration is not always an all-or-nothing decision.
While the concept of 'floating labour' has often been invoked to
describe the situation of the newly 'rootless' labourer, many of the
subjects of this study in fact identify with particular regions and
industries, even regularly travelling between their selected migration
areas and their home villages. This paper has a particular focus
on gender differences in motives for migration, and examines how this
might be implicated in certain of the impacts of migration. It also
raises some of the possibilities of how migration has economic, social
and cultural effects on people's home villages.
Huang Ping, in the second paper, explores why the number of Chinese
workers leaving agricultural production and/or migrating from rural to
urban areas is on the increase. He argues that sociological approaches
which privilege either structural impulses or individual agency in an
attempt to explain questions such as this cannot in themselves explain
the ways migration decisions are made. He sees elements of both
positions at work and invokes Anthony Giddens' idea of 'structuration'
to back his argument. Giddens propose that "the constitution of agents
and structures are not two independently given sets of phenomena, a
dualism, but represent a duality" in which agent and structure impact
on each other, often in unintended and unpredictable ways. Thus,
villagers need to have institutional opportunities for migration in
order to migrate, but they must also have the desire to do so and they
must have certain expectations on which to base their decisions.
Further, Huang Ping points out, they will learn over time "not only to
appropriate and rationalise their motivations and purposes, but also
É to re-adjust their previous aims and É make some
changes in the motivations, actions and É themselves".
Cai Fang uses data from a survey of 1500 rural-urban migrants in Jinan
City, Shandong Province to explore how what he describes as a
traditional reluctance to migrate from ancestral lands has been
overcome by growing numbers of rural Chinese. In fact, he explains,
there are still many barriers to successful rural-urban migration,
including limited urban resources for migrants Ð especially in the
area of welfare provision Ð the cultural impact of the HuKou system
of registered permanent residence and the Ôland bondage' system
which creates greater attachments to the land for many rural Chinese
than is often the case in other countries experiencing high rates of
rural-urban migration. Fang is concerned to explore which 'push' and
'pull' forces appear to have the greatest impact on people's decisions
to migrate. One of the key factors in how these forces are assessed, he
argues, is to see that labour migration in China is not just about
physical relocation but is more often about a division of labour
amongst family members: "It is a decision about who should stay home
farming and who go out earning wages, and this decision is supposed to
be made on rational justifications É so as to maximise the
household's expected gains."
Xiang Biao's analysis of the formation of various 'ethnic enclaves' in
Beijing challenges the notion that migration communities rely on
isolation for their cohesion. That is, he finds that Beijing migrant
communities tend to have greater internal cohesion as their
interaction with the outside world increases. The city's Zhejiang
Village, which he describes as having the greatest degree of cohesion,
has strong links Ð through garment production and marketing Ð
throughout China and as far west as Eastern Europe. Beijing's Anhui
village, on the other hand, whose inhabitants specialise in vegetable
selling, piece work and domestic service, has its greatest links in
areas near the community and also has the loosest internal cohesion.
Xiang Biao also notes that the notion of 'floating population' needs to
be rethought in the Chinese rural-urban migration contest, since not
all rural-urban migrants are surplus labourers Ð many in fact, take
with them to their new areas capital, technology and information, not
just labour Ð and may have enough economic power to actually change
institutional arrangements in the areas to which they move.
Finally Luo Keren's examination of data on the number of Shanghai
workers going abroad for business each year provides confirmation that
China's opening up and reform process is producing viable results, with
youth increasingly providing the bulk of China's economic and cultural
links with the rest of the world. This sector of the Shanghai
out-migrating population has also featured rapidly increasing
educational levels in recent years. However, Keren finds that if
Shanghai Ð and more broadly, China Ð is to profit from this
increase in the "golden age" of the early 21st century, it also must
position itself as being able to provide support for these people. This
support, according to his survey, must cover areas such as assistance
with visas, help with guarding basic rights and recognition of
achievements in people's new countries.
The collection ends with an extensive bibliography, compiled by Ma
Chunhua and Huang Ping, which will be of great use in allowing APMRN
members and others to progress in a field which will continue to yield
important data and opportunities for further research.
Stephen Fitzpatrick June 1999
