Holiday evokes migrant family separations
Print Edition
MIGRANT workers in Shanghai typically stream back across China to rural hometowns for family reunions at Spring Festival, but for some, the holiday is a sad reminder of how economics separate parents and children.
One of those who won’t be going home this week is Nie Shufang, 41, a household maid from southwestern China who has two sons living back home. Last year she managed to save enough money to travel to see them during the Chinese New Year. This year she can’t afford it.
The plight of migrant children forced to live apart from their parents is especially painful now because Spring Festival is traditionally a joyous time of year spent with family.
“Relatives back home often say how working in large cities always means good fortune, but that’s only a myth,” said Nie, who hails from a rural village in the city of Chongqing.
By the end of 2013, it was estimated that there were about 7 million migrant workers in Shanghai. They earn an average 29,707 yuan (US$4,750) a year, according to the latest figures for 2013 from the National Bureau of Statistics. That is 25 percent below the city’s average wage.
They come to big cities from impoverished inland areas to seek a better life and carve a brighter future for their children. But that too often means the children have to be left behind.
Most of the migrant workers in Shanghai have left for this year’s Spring Festival, which begins on Thursday. Nie is not among them.
“Last year during Spring Festival, I spent four days traveling to and from my hometown, and the rest of the time visiting friends and family,” she said. “I didn’t have much time to spend alone with my sons.”
Nie, who earns 3,000-4,000 yuan a month, said she’s afraid to ask for too many days off for fear of being sacked by her employer. Besides that, there’s nothing left of the money she and her husband, a construction worker, managed to save last year.
The couple remits about 15,000 yuan home every year to cover school costs and living expenses of their two sons, who board at a junior middle school.
Costly schooling
They would prefer if the children could live with them in Shanghai, but the two years when the boys were with them here proved too costly for schooling.
“My sons’ teachers told me I had to find extracurricular classes for them because they were lagging other students,” Nie said. “I couldn’t afford that.”
Zhang Mingshu, 38, a migrant worker from Anhui Province and father of two, works as an electrician in Shanghai. He said he and his wife, who works as a household maid, are the nomads of China’s industrialization.
“I have been a migrant worker since I graduated from junior high school,” Zhang said. “We have been forced to follow the money, though many of us still work at menial jobs and make a paltry living in cities.”
Zhang and his wife earn about 7,000 yuan a month. They live in a 12-square-meter rental unit with their kindergarten-aged son. His elder brother boards at a school back in their hometown, costing them 10,000 yuan a year.
Zhang said they can’t afford annual trips home during the Spring Festival, but their elder boy comes to stay with them during summer school holidays. Chinese media have dubbed these children “little migrant birds.”
But the parents would prefer to have the birds in the nest all year around.
“They are torn between two choices, either going back home and living with their children in poverty or living apart from their children so they can make more money,” said Du Lei, an official in the Shanghai liaison office of the government of Henan Province, a source of many Shanghai migrants. “Those who do bring their children with them to cities face high costs.”
That cost is worth it for migrants determined to give their children the benefit of Shanghai’s excellent school system.
“They want their children to have a better life than they have, and education is the key,” Du said.
Shanghai can barely cope with the demand. In the Five-Year Plan unveiled in 2011, the city pledged that 92 new public schools would be built in peripheral areas where migrants are most dominant. But not all migrant parents are well served by the city’s education system, Du said.
Shut out by costs
“Sometimes slots are exhausted because schools usually give preference to children with at least one parent who has a Shanghai residency permit,” Du said.
Under current policies, many migrant parents can’t register their children for high school and college entrance exams in Shanghai, cutting short their educational prospects.
Some migrant parents are simply shut out by costs. Both Nie and Zhang, the fathers from Anhui, said they think their children understand why family separation is necessary.
“It’s hard economic reality,” Zhang said, grimly.
Du said the trend is starting to change. As the economies in inland, poorer provinces start to pick up under government development policies, more job opportunities will open up and more migrants will decide to go home to work.
The Bolstra Fund, a group operating under the auspices of the Shanghai Charity Foundation, is among the organizations trying to address the needs of migrant children separated from their parents. The fund organizes weeklong camps for the children and does research on investment prospects in organic farming, construction and other promising occupational sectors in inland areas.
“We want to empower migrant parents with more choices,” said Bellini Qin, founder of the Bolstra Fund.
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