A Research On Migrant Workers’ Rural-Urban Migration Action

Since China’s reform and opening up,Rural-urban migration is becoming to the norm choices in the course of life for most peasant from individual actions gradually.From the formal point of view,rural-urban migration is mainly temporary migration and permanent migration supplement more than thirty years ago.All walks of life widely recognized that China’s household registration system and the existing rural land system are the main institutional barriers that restricted migrant workers permanent migration.Recently,China has been actively promoting the new urbanization strategy which institutional design is mainly from the two aspects of reform.On the one hand,it has proposed to further liberalization of urban residence restrictions,and basic public services cover the resident population including migrant workers;On the other hand,it has stressed that continue to improve the existing rural land system,and protect peasant’s land rights.Academics argue about the current Chinese urbanization which can be roughly divided into radicals and conservatives.Radicals believe Chinese urbanization has lagged behindindustrialization,and should accelerate urbanization nowadays;while conservatives think that economic development can not provide adequate and stable jobs and acommodate a large number of migrant workers,so the current urbanization should be cautious.The focus they argued is the judge of the current stage of economic development:whether the current economic development can absorb a large number of migrant workers,and ensure stable employment and guaranteed income.Therefore,the key question is,to make accurate judgments of the structural characteristics of the Chinese economy and society.At the same time,a growing number of studies have looked at the prevalence of temporary migration phenomenon in developing countries which continues today,and shows the similarity of Chinese rural-urban migration.Thus,it is worth exploring is that if there are some common factors both of China’s rural-urban migration and many developing countries?What’s the generation logic of rural-urban temporary migration in many developing countries,including China?Why it is not the same form as the Western countries(mainly permanent migration)?In this regard,a number of academics have been explained,but still lack a more effective explanation paradigm.Based on the reality and theoretical background described above,this study is to explore the migrant workers’ rural-urban migration action,in the background of the new urbanization,taking Zhongshan City,Guangdong Province which is promoting the new urbanization reform actively for example.The research strategy is combing previous studies on rural-urban migration,first from the theoretical perspective to insight into the occurrence and evolution mechanisms of rural-urban migration,and proposed theoretical analysis paradigm of Chinese migrant workers’ rural-urban migration.Then to test theories hypotheses,using survey data of Zhongshan migrant workers,eventually come to the following five aspects conclusion:First,in essence,rural-urban migration is the institutional consequences of modernity,and the specific form is closely related to the structural characteristics of rural-urban migration in different periods.In the classical modern period,Western countries stripped farmers from land by the agriculture capitalist transformation,and achieved a balanced among capital,national and labor that enabled and secured the rural-urban permanent migration.In the fluid modern times,the balanced among capital,national and labor was broken,capital gained greater powers which is the fundamental reasons of migrate temporarily in many developing countries.Since the reform and opening up in China,it also reflects the structural characteristics of fluid modernity which is the structural reason of temporary migration mainly nowadays.Second,Zhongshan City has implementing the new urbanization reform in recent years.Firstly,to protect the basic social rights of migrant workers by basic public services covering the resident population gradually;Secondly,to promote the psychological integration by directing social participation;Finally,to guide some migrant workers institutional permanent migration gradually by integration system.These reforms improved the social welfare of migrant workers to some extent,promoted the social integration,and achieved permanent relocation for a small part of migrant workers.But generally speaking,the enthusiasm of sharing basic public services is relatively high while integral settled enthusiasm is relatively low.Third,the survey on migrant workers who successfully applied for the integration settled in Zhongshan city showed that most of them are the elite of migrant workers.But the proportion of formalities is much lower compared with the migrants who have urban household registration.The rights behind agriculture accounts are the main reasons for giving up the chance finally.In addition,the willingness to settle in city is one of the important factors on institutional permanent migration.Fourth,migrant workers’ willingness of rural-urban migration is still temporary migration mainly,only a small part of them hold a clear permanent migration intentions,and institutional permanent migration intentions is higher than behavioral permanent migration intentions.According to the fluid modernity,this study established four research hypotheses,which are human capital,social status,identity and lifestyle preferences.On this basis,this study constructed Logistic regression model of migrant workers’ behavioral permanent migration intentions and institutional permanent migration intentions.The results show that the impact of human capital is not significant while social status has a significant impact;and identity has a significant impact on behavioral permanent migration intentions but no significant effect on institutional permanent migration intentions;lifestyle preferences has a significant impact,just the influence of rural lifestyle on institutional permanent migration intentions is relatively weak.At last,in the discussion section,this study further explored the action logic of migrant workers’ rural-urban migration,and pointed out that it reflects Max.Weber alleged bothpurpose legitimate action and emotional action characteristics;respond to the academic debates about Chinese Urbanization and rural-urban migration form,and pointed out that if it still has fluid modernity characteristics in the future,we should take resident population urbanization rather than household population urbanization strategy;discussed about Chinese modernity and the future of rural-urban migration theoretically,and pointed out that Chinese modernity is likely to re-implement a balanced among national,capital and labor,by that time the temporary migration may be replaced by permanent migration.