Language And Social Exclusion Of The Migrant Workers

The survey data of the National Bureau of Statistics on the Migrant workers in China showed that the number of migrant workers has increased year by year,especially in the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta.Migrant workers will face with various difficulties in adapting to urban life.And language adaption is the first one of those confronting problems,especially at the aforementioned areas where the local dialect have so unshakeable positions.For migrant workers,master local dialect represents their ability and identity.Different languages use not only prevents the social solidarity of different groups,but also leads migrant workers to experience hostility and exclusion from the mainstream society.According to the literature reviews,studies of social exclusion of migrant workers mainly focused on how the dual urban-rural structure system influence exclusion experience in such aspects as political,economic and social relationship.On the one hand,the previous studies didn't pay attention to the interactive process between the subjective and objective factors that constructs social exclusion.The exclusion migrant workers percept and feel mentally and internally,will create greater barrier for them to integrate into the society than the actual social exclusion which was imposed by local society.On the other hand,those studies ignored that ability and other factors could influence and regulate social exclusion which therefore had different levels.Both domestic and foreign researches showed that language is one of the key factors that influence the social integration of inflow areas.Therefore,this study will use Social Cognitive Theory to explore the mechanism of language acting on social exclusion of the Migrant Workers.So that people can take effective ways to reduce their social exclusion as well as to encourage migrant workers to improve their language proficiency and to integrate into urban life actively.This research is based on the surveys of questionnaires and interviews of the migrant workers in the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta.According to the interactive process of the subjective and objective factors that construct social exclusion,the multidimensional measurements of the social exclusion and the affected areas where language was used in the lives of migrants workers.We analyze the mechanism of language(language proficiency and speech accent difference)acting on the migrant workers' social exclusion(economic exclusion,social relationship exclusion and the psychological exclusion perception).In particular,this study attempts to answer the following questions: First,what are the influencing factors of the migrant worker' language proficiency;Second,the basic status quo of migrant workers' social exclusion;Third,the constructive process that language acts on of migrant workers' social exclusion;Fourth,why does language can affect social exclusion to migrant workers.In other words,what is the influencing mechanism of the relationship between migrant workers' language use and social exclusion?Base on the data of questionnaire surveys,we firstly explore the influencing factors which affect migrant workers' language abilities.Then,we describing the basic status quo of migrant workers' social exclusion,interpreting how language affect migrant worker's social exclusion,and exploring the internal mechanism of language influencing migrant workers' social exclusion from three aspects: the relations between language and migrant workers' earnings,the relations between language and migrant workers' social contact,and the relations between language and migrant workers' sense of social exclusion.Finally,in order to complement the shortcomings of the questionair survey,we also analyze the concrete constructive process of language acting on the migrant workers' social exclusion according to interview materials.Following points are found in this research:1.The factors affecting migrant workers' language proficiency.Education only has significant influence on migrant workers with less speech accent.Language proficiency is influenced by language contact,and such influence plays a more important role in life context than work context.2.The basic status quo of migrant workers' social exclusion.In general,migrant workers with low language proficiency show higher level of social exclusion in average monthly wage,social interaction and social exclusion perception;migrant workers with big difference in speech accent show higher level of social exclusion than migrant workers with little difference,except for the average monthly wage and the deprivation factor.3.The effects of language acting on the social exclusion of migrant workers.The direct effect(main effect)of language acting on the social exclusion to migrant workers is that: speech accent differences and language proficiency have both significantly influence on three aspects of exclusion,including economic exclusion,social contact and social exclusion perception.The moderate effect of language proficiency on social exclusion is that: language proficiency regulates the variables with capital accumulation effect,social relation effect and other factors which significantly influence social exclusion on migrant workers.And also,language proficiency regulates these variables' different levels effect in the migrant workers' social exclusion.According to interview material,the influence of language on migrant worker's social exclusion mainly exist in the labor market,for example,in chances getting,wage differential,identity recognition and so on;in social life,for example,inequality in individual contact,in Daily Service and Social Management in their daily lives;as well as the psychological perception of exclusion.4.The mechanism of language influencing on migrant workers.According to the interview materials and the results of statistic models,we found the internal mechanism of language influencing on social exclusion as following: Firstly,it results from the institutional arrangement and “legalized” construction of social choice in the modernization process of our country.Institutional arrangement makes migrant workers' social exclusion possible;social choice makes social exclusion caused by language possible.Secondly,it results from the social function of language.The explicit social function of language as human capital and communication media mainly manifest as social adaptation ability directly influence on migrant's social exclusion.The implicit social function of language as an index of cognition stimulates people's social cognition and evaluation,specialized as follows: migrant workers have different expectations of themselves because of different levels of language proficiency,thus their sense of relative exclusion perception arise;assessments of other abilities from the local citizens are different due to migrants' different language proficiency,local citizens also make different recognition of migrants' culture and identity according to their different language proficiency and speech accents,thus inspires social exclusion,consequently different levels of exclusion are imposed.