The Living Condition And Social Mobility Of Urban Underclass

Since the implementation of the Reform and Opening-up policy, Chinese society has taken profound changes, and has formed a great bottom society. With further social transformation, it appears a tendency of solidification in social structure; China’s second-generation phenomenon begins to emerge, contradictions and conflicts increase continuously. Therefore, it is a great sociological subject to explore the life-world of bottom society and the social mobility.This research aims to analyze the living conditions of urban underclass, their social mobility and the consciousness of class mobility. The research explores the changes of the individuals’living surroundings and their subjective experience, by using the materials from questionnaires and structured interviews, in order to avoiding the disadvantages of quantitative method in the research of social mobility. The study shows the fact that urban underclass groups have a miserable life, and they are suffering pain both physically and mentally. Most of them have no jobs, and rely on social assistance. Their social contacts are confined within the family, which leads to a self-close situation. The urban underclass groups suffer great psychological pressure and have the feeling of helplessness; few of them even have the revenge mentality to the society. The main reason of falling into the bottom of social structure is that their families have experienced big changes, especially their family members have been ill. Personal factors such as poor education, lack of skills, also hinder their up-flowing. The results show that education and the rate of income population have effect on the underclass’s perception of hierarchical positioning. The changes of state policy and social structure also have produced profound influence on the individual’s fate, including the interruption of education by Culture Revolution, gradual marketization, the reform of state-owned enterprises, the disintegration of unit system, and city management.The social mobility of urban underclass shows a trend of solidification. In the inter-generation mobility, most of them have attained higher occupational and educational status than their father generation; however their mobility level is low, they are at the bottom basically. Some vocations have obvious inheritance. The offspring of labor worker are doing the same job as their father generation, and the attainment of education is influenced by the family background, such as father’s occupation and mother’s education. In the intra-generational mobility, most of the urban underclass has no experience of changing jobs, and they are lack of occupational mobility. Their social status hasn’t changed in the past three years, and education and perception of hierarchical positioning have effect on the change situation of social status. Urban underclass is not only at the bottom of society, but also realizes that it is difficult to improve their status by own effort. Due to their human capital failure and social capital lack, they are excluded from formal employment system, they fall into the bottom of society and cannot get rid of this situation. Therefore urban underclass takes the hope on their children, hoping that they can take them out of miserable situation.