IN the lecture room of a downtown highrise, 27-year-old hairdresser Roger Wu — a migrant or “new Shanghainese” — practices English conversation every week with an American coach.

“I have many foreign clients and English is essential,” says Wu, who works in a trendy, upscale salon.

Wearing a black polo shirt, khakis and fashionable eyeglasses, he looks like a typical urbanite. Nine years ago after graduating from high school, he arrived in Shanghai from a backward city in Hubei Province.

Wu is part of a wave of new immigrants born after 1980 who are moving to China’s booming cities. Unlike their parents, they don’t work on construction sites and they are better-educated than their parents. They also save less and spend more on the good things in urban life.

They have aspirations far beyond earning a day-to-day living and sending money home to their families.

“I want to build a future in this city,” says Wu, speaking for most young migrants in China.

Around 46.6 percent of the country’s 269 million migrant workers belong to the young generation, according to a survey released on May 12 by the National Bureau of Statistics.

Shanghai, a city of over 24 million people, has a migrant population of more than 9.6 million, including 290,000 permanent residents. They range from construction workers to hairdressers to professionals. Migrants, especially middle-class, are sometimes called “new Shanghainese.”

Several hundred million additional migrants will move to cities in coming years, according to the new national urbanization plan (2014-2020) released in March by the State Council.

It calls for an increased rate of urbanization from 53.7 percent today to 60 percent by 2020.

Young migrants spent an average of 940 yuan (US$150) a month last year, nearly 20 percent more than older workers, according to the survey.

The average younger migrant sent 12,802 yuan back to their rural hometowns last year, around 30 percent less than migrants born before 1980.

Nationally, the monthly income of migrants increased faster than the income of non-migrants, rising around 13.9 percent last year, compared with 11.8 percent the previous year.

Big cities are the first choices of newcomers; around 55 percent work in big and medium-sized cities, twice the percentage of older workers.

“Changing society and industrial structure provide more opportunities for young migrants. Tertiary industry, especially the service industry, boosts migrants’ employment,” says sociologist Zhang Haidong from Shanghai University.

As a hairstylist, Wu earns 16,000-20,000 yuan (US$2,593-3,242) every month. He and a roommate split the 3,000-yuan monthly rent on a 2-bedroom apartment in Pudong. He works out frequently at the gym and saves money for his own salon.

When he arrived in Shanghai nine years ago, he did tedious work in a garment factory in the suburbs.

“Back then, even going downtown for a hearty meal was too good to be true,” Wu recalls.

When he read a magazine interview with a hairdresser, he was determined to train and find a niche in the same field. He studied and became an apprentice. Now Wu charges 360 yuan for a haircut.

Both of his parents were migrant workers in Shanghai, his father a construction crane operator, his mother a cleaner and kitchen helper. They saved every penny until they could return to their hometown in Hubei, start a little business and buy a flat.

Wu’s life plan is more ambitious.

“Even at the lowest ebb of my life, I didn’t lose self-esteem,” he says. “I need to be respected.”

He recalls that some of his employers treated migrants like the most menial servants, ordering them around, even demanding that they do household chores.

“I’d rather live in harder conditions now so that I can live better later,” Wu says. “I used to be a hairdressers’ apprentice during the day and at night I styled the hair for call girls and dancers in clubs to make extra money. I lived in a basement room the size of a small bathroom.”

In the past, little or no education limited migrants’ options to manual and generally unskilled labor, but education is better today and migrants aim for jobs requiring special skills.

One third of China’s young migrants are high school graduates and some of them have some higher education — that’s 19.2 percent higher than the previous generation, according to the survey by the National Bureau of Statistics.

Huang Fei, a migrant from Jiangsu Province, is a painter for a construction company and earns 8,000 yuan a month.

Last year, his son arrived in Shanghai after graduating from junior college and went to work on an assembly line making pipe fittings. His salary is less than half that of his father.

Even though the construction business is eager for younger migrants who earn more than factory workers, Huang won’t let his son follow in his footsteps.

“I don’t want my son suffer same thing his father has been through,” Huang insists. “It wasn’t my intention to encourage him to come to Shanghai and labor for seven days a week with no rest or fixed residence,” he says.

Huang, like many parents of young migrants, never asks his son to send his hard-earned money back to support the family. “How tough life is here for a migrant worker. I want my son enjoy life and have some fun somehow,” he says.

Nonetheless, hukou system or household registration and the social security network frustrate even the most successful migrants, including professionals. Holders of hukou are entitled to various benefits such as public education and medical care. Most migrants can’t get one.

Many migrants say they don’t feel the sense of belonging in the city where they have chosen to live, however, it’s even harder to go back to their smaller hometowns and cities.

“For migrants, the allure of metropolises like Shanghai is huge with its high salaries, numerous opportunities, the glamor of modernization and lifestyle. But the restraints of many policies make their life painful in this city,” sociologist Zhang says.

Liu Jian, 38, started out as a carpenter for a construction company and eventually became a small contractor in Shanghai. Every year he would visit his family in Sichuan once or twice, for no more than three days.

Last year, he finally bought 150-square-meter flat downtown. He brought his parents, wife and 15-year-old daughter to Shanghai.

The situation deteriorated. After many years of separation, Liu doesn’t get along well with his wife and daughter and his hectic work as a contractor strains their relationships further. After finding his wife with another man, he got a divorce.

He sold the flat and took his daughter back to his hometown, where she is used to the education system.

“I don’t think I will come to Shanghai again,” he says. “The city helped me realize my dream but all the ambitions were blasted here as well.

“I can’t blame my wife, it’s the price I pay. The only thing I can do is to make it up to my daughter as much as I can,” he says.

Sociologist Zhang wants to see change in the current urbanization pattern that forces rural migrants to leave their families and move far from home to a few big cities.

“The government should develop a better national urban plan that creates attractive smaller towns and cities, so migrants can work closer to home,” he says.

Respect, disdain, indifference — Locals talk about migrants

Amy Yang, 30, reporter

Migrants are so underpaid. Those working on construction sites like carpenters or electricians require skills that are far more difficult that the daily work of any ordinary white-collar professional.

Look at the construction workers in Western countries. If I got the same payment I wouldn’t mind being a migrant worker!

Jessie Wang, 35, high school teacher from Beijing

I really don’t like migrant workers. They are so dirty and smelly that I wish the government would issue a regulation banning migrants from the subway.

Emily Chan, 27, stock broker

I actually know nothing about migrant workers and my only image is of construction workers. I don’t know their living conditions and I don’t really care. My friends and I never discuss them and I scarcely notice any news reports about migrants.

Wallace Zhang, 40, department manager, state-owned company

Why do we keep calling them migrant workers? Can we call them blue collars or just workers like everyone else?

Allen Gu, 25, office worker in a private company

The words “migrant worker” are condescending. They imply that someone is tacky, uncivilized and rude. This is wrong. Without migrant workers, our city would not rise like this. We should give them more respect. Also, I think they are actually more diligent than most urbanites.