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No place in cities, no home on the range
Source: Xinhua |
March 16, 2010, Tuesday
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Print Edition
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LACKING education, resentful of urbanites' stares, indifferent to farmland and longing for a decent life in cities, the "second generation" migrant farm workers are emerging in China and posing new challenges to the country's rapid urbanization.
Born in the late 1980s and early 1990s, they have become more involved in urban life, and some even grew up on the margins of cities and have never taken up farming, unlike their predecessors who flooded into cities to make money and seldom considered settling down.
The new generation has a dream bigger than money, and it's also the dream of their parents for them.
"We will hope our children will never be called migrant workers like us," said Zhu Xueqin, a migrant worker from Shanghai and a deputy to the National People's Congress (NPC), the country's top legislature. "Our children were born in cities and have no affections for farmland - some of them have never been to the countryside."
As an NPC deputy, Zhu has often visited juvenile prisons in Shanghai to offer psychological counseling over the past two years, and she found that quite a few delinquents were "second generation" migrant workers. "They are fragile and sensitive, they feel they are always discriminated against, and they are prone to bear grudge against cities and urbanites," she said.
Zhu's worries highlighted the unprecedented, complicated challenges brought about by China's migrant workers, whose population has exceeded 200 million. Their hard labor has helped to ensure an 8-percent economic growth for China last year and contributed to the recovery of global economy, but they are still marginalized in cities.
Due to the restriction of the household registration system, or hukou, migrant workers have not been granted the same status as city dwellers and they have been denied adequate access to education, medical care, housing, employment and other public services - overwhelmingly reserved for those with urban houkou.
"The new generation of migrant workers is a generation with dreams," said Xie Jianshe of Guangzhou University, specializing in migrant worker studies. "They are more attached to cities, rather than rural villages. When they go back to the countryside, they find themselves unable to do farming."
"The most pressing task for now is to reform the hukou system," said NPC deputy Cai Fang, director of the Institute of Population and Labor Economics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "If that cannot be accomplished at one go, the government should ensure the equality of public services, especially expand the coverage of social safety net for migrant workers."
First issued in 1958, the hukou system classifies China's population into "rural" and "non-rural" categories, and has long been blamed as a cause of widening gap between urban and rural residents.
Born in the late 1980s and early 1990s, they have become more involved in urban life, and some even grew up on the margins of cities and have never taken up farming, unlike their predecessors who flooded into cities to make money and seldom considered settling down.
The new generation has a dream bigger than money, and it's also the dream of their parents for them.
"We will hope our children will never be called migrant workers like us," said Zhu Xueqin, a migrant worker from Shanghai and a deputy to the National People's Congress (NPC), the country's top legislature. "Our children were born in cities and have no affections for farmland - some of them have never been to the countryside."
As an NPC deputy, Zhu has often visited juvenile prisons in Shanghai to offer psychological counseling over the past two years, and she found that quite a few delinquents were "second generation" migrant workers. "They are fragile and sensitive, they feel they are always discriminated against, and they are prone to bear grudge against cities and urbanites," she said.
Zhu's worries highlighted the unprecedented, complicated challenges brought about by China's migrant workers, whose population has exceeded 200 million. Their hard labor has helped to ensure an 8-percent economic growth for China last year and contributed to the recovery of global economy, but they are still marginalized in cities.
Due to the restriction of the household registration system, or hukou, migrant workers have not been granted the same status as city dwellers and they have been denied adequate access to education, medical care, housing, employment and other public services - overwhelmingly reserved for those with urban houkou.
"The new generation of migrant workers is a generation with dreams," said Xie Jianshe of Guangzhou University, specializing in migrant worker studies. "They are more attached to cities, rather than rural villages. When they go back to the countryside, they find themselves unable to do farming."
"The most pressing task for now is to reform the hukou system," said NPC deputy Cai Fang, director of the Institute of Population and Labor Economics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "If that cannot be accomplished at one go, the government should ensure the equality of public services, especially expand the coverage of social safety net for migrant workers."
First issued in 1958, the hukou system classifies China's population into "rural" and "non-rural" categories, and has long been blamed as a cause of widening gap between urban and rural residents.
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