What Drives Migrants Back to Set up Firms?Return-home Entrepreneurial Intention of Rural Migrant Workers in China

The extant literature on international immigrants has discussed migrants’entrepreneurial activities in the context of Western countries but has paid little attention to return-home entrepreneurial intention(RHEI).Rural migrant workers(RMWs)in China,who used to promote rural development by remittances and were characterized by similarities with early international migrants,have gradually returned to their hometowns to initiate entrepreneurial activities.Based on the structured questionnaire conducted in 2015 and 2020in Anhui Province,China,this article combines the concept of mixed embeddedness with the idea of double-layered embeddedness and analyzes the impacts of the social,economic and institutional context in RMWs’hometowns and migration destinations on RMWs’RHEI by using binary logistic regression.The article shows that the social,economic,and institutional environments of RMWs’hometowns and migration destinations have effects on their RHEI.The embeddedness in the economic and informal institutional context in RMWs’RHEI is even more important than personal characteristics.Compared with migration destinations,RMWs’hometowns exert a more influential effect on their RHEI.However,that does not mean that the role of migration destinations can be undervalued.Actually,the better the social,economic,and institutional environments of migration destinations RMWs moved into is,the higher entrepreneurial intention they will have after returning to their hometowns.The article proposes a modified framework in combination of mixed embeddedness with double-layer embeddedness and proves that it is suitable for analyzing RMWs’RHEI.The framework has important implications for strengthening China’s RMWs to return home to start their own businesses.

Problems of Rural Migrant Workers and Policies in the New Period of Urbanization

The huge migration of rural workers has new characteristics such as the bad order, high degree of concentration, low level of collective action, marginality in social status, unfair treatment, difficult integration of the new generation, and the new return trend of rural migrants, which causes ‘urban diseases’ in China. Countermeasures should be taken to develop medium-sized and small cities, integrate the labor market of the city and countryside, provide necessary public services, social security and vocational training, guide the rural migrant workers to return rationally, and help the new generation live in harmony with urban residents.

Rural migrants' participation in old-age insurance: a case study of the inter-provincial migrant workers from Sichuan, China

Old-age pension, a fundamental part of the Chinese social security system, is perceived by the Chinese government as the last support for rural-to-urban migrant workers upon retreating from the labor market. Using survey data collected by the authors, this paper examines a host of factors which influence migrant workers' participation in the old-age scheme. The result shows that individual characteristics, employment status, attitudes toward old-age support and perception of the old-age pension system significantly differentiate two groups of migrant workers between those that have participated in and their counterparts who have not participated in the old-age pension schemes. Among a number of factors, age, educational attainment, holding labor contract, etc. are found to be significant factors influencing migrants' behavior participating(or not participating) the available age-pension schemes. Policy implications for how to improve the rate of participation in existing old-age pension schemes among migrant workers are drawn from the findings.

An Empirical Analysis of Employment Stability and the Wage Gap of Rural Migrants in China Based on Quantile Regression

Under the background of accelerated integrated urban-rural development, this paper offers an analysis on the short-term employment of rural migrants in China and resulting wage gap between long-term and short-term rural migrants. On the basis of correcting for sample selection problems arising from labor market participation and short-term employment, rural migrants＇ wage function is estimated using quantile regression method, and wage gap between long-term and short-term rural migrants is decomposed using MM method. Our empirical results suggest that those with a higher level of education, training experience and local employment recommended by family relations or in formal labor market are more likely to secure long-term labor contract,＂ region and education have significant contributions to the wage of rural migrants,＂ rural migrants of both long- and short-term contract types have great gaps at the bottom of salary distribution; and there exists a sticky floor effect in wage difference of rural migrants. These results have important policy implications in enhancing employment stability of rural migrants, improving income distribution equity, speeding up the process of urbanization, and balancing regional development.

Return of Rural Migrants in Southwest China:An Empirical Study Based on 2010 Copies of Questionnaires

[Objectives]To analyze and study the reasons for the return of rural migrants in southwest China,so as to come up with effective policy recommendations.[Methods]Based on the questionnaire survey on the return of rural population in Chongqing,Sichuan,Guizhou,and Yunnan,the characteristics and reasons of the return of rural migrants were analyzed.[Results]It was found that the return of rural population in the southwest China was dominated by middle-aged and young people with higher education level,and mainly from Guangdong,Zhejiang,Shanghai,etc.,the time of staying outside gradually declined,and after the return,they were more willing to go outside rural areas to continue to engage in the same or similar work,and they showed stronger willingness to flow again.[Conclusions]The reasons for the return of rural migrants are diversified,mainly affected by limited welfare of medical care,education,and housing resulted from high housing price in employment places,household registration limitation,as well as the need of caring the elderly in the hometown,and returning to start an undertaking.In line with the reasons for return of rural migrants in southwest China,it came up with some effective policy recommendations.

Wage Levels of Rural Migrant Workers in China during 1979-2010： Estimates and Trends

Studies on long-term wage levels of rural migrant workers are rarely found in relevant literature. On the basis of systematic collection of statistical data, this paper gives a quantitative estimation of the wage level of rural migrant workers in China and its evolution following pro market reforms since 1978. Results indicate that over the past 30 years, the nominal monetary wage of migrant workers maintained a 10% average annual increase. Real wage levels adjusted by the consumer price index （CPI） experienced three stages of evolution： initially, migrant workers earned a higher average monetary salary than formal employees, whereas this situation reversed in later stages.

Analysis on the Causes of the Plight of Chinese Rural Migrant Workers＇ Endowment Insurance

At present, Chinese society is from traditional society to modern society in transition to accelerate, in the social, political, and economic structure, great changes have taken place; due to strong liquidity, migrant workers＇ groups in social security, are still in the stage of development, and there are still a lot of problems, especially the problem of endowment insurance. Although local governments develop the old-age insurance of migrant workers with their own characteristics, and have their respective advantages, but the effect is not ideal, as follows： ＂one low and one high＂, namely the migrant workers＇ participation rate was low and the insurance of migrant workers was ＂high rate of surrender＂. The reason is both within the Chinese social transformation factors, and external economic globalization competition; both obiectively, government policy implementation is not in place, and subjectively, migrant workers lack insured willing.

Research on the Development Trend of Urbanization of Rural Migrant Workers from the Perspectives of Health and Life Stress

In this paper, we conduct research on the development trend of urbanization of the rural migrant workers from the perspectives of health and life stress. According to the theory of modern sociological about community, the migrant worker and city people’s relations belongs to typical in community’s relations with the outside community, among them not only isolates and repels psychologically mutually, but also has the direct conflicts of interest. This not only causes the migrant worker to suffer the prejudice and discrimination of city people, is hard to be a part of the city life, but also causes repellency urban institutional arrangements to disintegrate to a certain extent difficultly while the migrant worker is hard to enter in the urban system. Under this basis, this paper proposes the health and life stress assisted development trend of urbanization of the rural migrant workers basic research, the idea is new and innovative, in the later time we will apply it more.

A discourse on creating and rendering educational and cultural enrichment services to rural migrant workers by public libraries

As far as China's enormous success in her economic reforms and development is concerned,Chinese rural migrant workers indeed have had their biggest share of contributions.Yet ironically in return,they have only received a disproportionate meager share of benefit rewards.These people represent a huge economically deprived group at the bottom of the social totem pole in China's metropolises.On the whole as a social group,their educational attainment is relatively low as compared to their average urban coworkers.As such being the case,their rights to access some of the cost-free cultural and educational enrichment programs in the society are limited and not always assured.Nevertheless and in general speaking,they manifest a strong and consistent desire to acquire all sorts of new and practical knowledge by means of accessing the resources and facilities of their local public libraries.It is suggested in this paper that public libraries are in a good position to give strong support to the central government's strategic planning for the development of a public culture service systema).In implementing such a government initiative with an unswerving purpose of advancing social justice and equality,public libraries should strife to provide as many as possible their library services at no cost to the public,especially to those socially deprived rural migrant workers.

Assessment of Rural Migrants’ Resettlement in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area

In order to assess the rural migrants' resettlement in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area and provide a reference for formulating the later migrant support policies, we select 342 rural migrants from County A in Hubei Province and County B in Chongqing Municipality for the household survey. The survey results show that after removal, housing, and infrastructure (electricity, transportation, communication, household appliances) concerning the migrants are improved substantially, but there are still some problems in water drinking, land, employment and income restoration. The later support should put great emphasis on the following aspects: including the rural migrants into the social security system; improving drinking water and irrigation facilities; promoting industrial restructuring; strengthening skills training and education for the migrants, to gradually enrich the migrants and make them live a comfortable life.

Preparing rural migrant workers for new jobs amid crisis

Referencing statistical yearbooks and census data,we first estimate the total number of rural migrant workers in China at about 238 million in 2008,including 71.4 million working across provinces.We also estimate how many migrant workers will be affected by the financial crisis and may lose their jobs.The coastal areas are the hardest hit.We predict that China in the first half of 2009 will face the most serious employment situation since the dawn of the new century, and that structural unemployment of rural migrant workers is the main problem.We estimate that around 34.18 million rural migrant workers would be facing the risk of structural unemployment.In order to cope with the shocks to rural migrant workers’ employment,the government should put a policy emphasis on adjusting rural migrant workers to new jobs.

Government Should Adopt Policies Favouring Rural Migrants

Based on a systematic analysis of the development trends of Chinese rural migrant workers, this article has designed a model representing the flow of migrant workers from rural to urban areas, and the patterns of urban settlement. The significant factors contributing to the problems of migrant workers are assessed and suggestions for improvement put forward. This article concludes that the rural migrant worker problem is attributable to institutional set-up and strategy and will continue for the entire process of China's modernization. It is estimated that modernization will be realized in about 2050, at which time the rural-urban migration process will also be completed. To solve the problems of migrant workers, a comprehensive strategy of balanced development between urban and rural areas should be carried out, featuring industry's support of agriculture and urban support of rural areas. Furthermore, the urban-rural dual structure should be gradually eliminated through institutional reform and policy innovation. The principles of equality, humanity and fair treatment for both urban and rural populations should be sought.

Employment and income of rural migrants in cities

This paper gives a detailed examination of the overall conditions,poverty and income of rural migrants over recent years,using results of the survey on rural migrants from 69,000 rural households and more than 7,100 administrative villages in 31 provinces,municipalities and autonomous regions,conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics(NBS)in 2004,as well as questionnaires in the four cities of Guangzhou,Beijing,Nanjing and Lanzhou conducted by our task force in 2007,together with on-site research in places like Guangzhou,Bozhou and Xi’an.This paper presents a comprehensive delineation of the conditions and problems facing rural migrants and sets out policy recommendations.

General report on the status of Chinese rural migrant workers and their development trends

This paper reviews the development of the rural migrant worker issue in China since reform and opening-up began. Firstly,utilizing substantial investigation,the authors analyze the new characteristics of Chinese rural migrant workers;Secondly,authors analyze the migrant workers’ contributions to reshaping the rural landscape and to driving China’s economic development and social structural change;Finally,using a quantitative analysis model,they examine the long-term trends of rural migrant workers and their interactions with macroeconomic and social development.

Regional suitability for settling rural migrants in urban China

Despite rapid urbanization, more than 200 million people living in urban areas are still registered as ＇agricultural＇ and are ineligible for most social benefits under China＇s Hukou （or household registration） system. This paper identifies the regional suitability for settling rural migrants in urban China based on three indicators （the degree of urgency, the skills and ability of the resettled community to adapt, and the ability of the government to support that resettlement）. It takes 2008 government socioeconomic data from a county level into con- sideration. Spatial, statistical, and decision tree analyses, supported by SPSS, Geodata, and ArcGIS software, show that there are five separate population types, each with different de- grees of suitability. These include highly suitable region, region suitable for settling migrants to outside regions, region suitable for settling migrants from outside regions, region with moderate potential, and unsuitable region. This paper suggests that regional policies for set- tling rural migrants are meaningful, since the five regions are distributed relatively separately. Due to the suitability for different bodies across regions, equal treatment should be applied to both the native migrants and that across counties and provinces. Furthermore, demolishment of the social welfare discrimination adhered to Hukou system and equalization of basic public services will be of more practical significance than the so-called settling rural migrants ac- tively and steadily.

Young Women Rural Migrant Workers in China’s West: Benefits of Schooling?

This paper explores the association of rural schooling with empowerment of female rural migrant workers in remote Western China.It asks what school-related intrinsic and instrumental capabilities enhanced their urban lives and their role as“drivers for development”in urbanizing China.The analysis of a long-term observational study of the females of one cluster of villages shows that recently-arrived(2015)young rural new-migrant workers manifested enhanced capabilities associated with their schooling in four dimensions of social freedoms:protective security against early arranged marriage,enhanced occupational opportunity,constructive social arrangements founded in rural identity,and cognitive and aspirational capabilities.Lower educational attainment and achievement are associated with fewer and weaker empowerment capabilities across all dimensions.Political empowerment capabilities in the sense of civil rights and entitlements have no foundation in earlier education and are lacking in their urban lives.However,a sense of“voice”is beginning to take hold among young rural migrant women.Taking a female-centric capability perspective uncovers beneficial aspects of internal migration,contributing to a more holistically theorized understanding of associated social changes.

The process and approach for the“citizenization”of Chinese rural migrant populations

China has a large rural migrant population,the country’s urbanization rate is low,and the cost of urbanization is high.These factors make the promotion of urbanization in China a long,arduous,and expensive task.By identifying and defining key elements of China’s urbanization transformation,this paper calculates the degree of China’s current transformation and proposes an approach based on systemic data to facilitate the continued process of transforming rural populations into citizens with full urban residential rights,herein referred to as“citizenization.”This paper finds that only about 40%of rural migrants had transformed into urban residents in 2011,and this share remained stagnant in 2012.Meanwhile,according to the sixth demographic census,the incomplete urbanization rate-calculated based on the difference between the share of the registered non-agriculture population as a percentage of the total population and the share of permanent urban residents-reached 23 percentage points.This thesis argues that it is necessary to advance the transformation process in a steady,stage-by-stage manner,including by carrying out multi-pronged efforts in various fields at various levels,and establishing a diversified cost-sharing mechanism,so as to achieve higher-quality,rational urbanization in China.

Employment marketization,social security inclusion and rights equalization of rural migrants

Against the backdrop of stagnation in hukou reform,a new theme in research on internal migration in China has emerged.Are reforms aimed at equalizing citizens’rights effective in promoting the rights and position of rural migrants?This paper proposes that a dual transition is taking place in China,one that is affecting the market and another in the area of social policy.The paper examines two lines of reform measures intended to equalize rights:the marketization of employment and the development of inclusive social policy.This investigation on the reforms shows that rural migrants to cities have attained citizenship-based rights to employment and job-related social insurance.This paper also discusses the issue of local citizenship as a by-product of China’s reform and development.The paper’s findings imply that rural migrants are beneficiaries of China’s dual-transition.

The Representation of Rural Migrant Women and the Discourses of Modernity in Contemporary China A Study of Zhang Kangkang＇s Novel Zhima

Contemporary Chinese female writer Zhang Kangkang＇s novel Zhima uses the lives of rural migrant women to symbolize the experience of the individual in Chinese urban modernity. The novel exposes the gender and class discrimination suffered by the rural migrant woman Zhima, but it does not fully unmask or probe the deeply institutionalized imbrications between gender, class and power in both rural and urban society. The challenge posed to the hierarchical distinction between rural/urban in this text＇s narrative ultimately gives way to the discourses on suzhi （quality） and ＂population control＂ that actually reinforce the rural/urban differences. The author＇s self-proclaimed feminist standpoint is also overshadowed by the text＇s complicity with developmentalist modern urban values. This literary text thus affirms, rather than calling into question, the post-socialist discourses of modernity, which are distinguished by their promotion and celebration of urbanization and free market.

Issues concerning Migrant Workers' Participation in the New Rural Cooperative Medical System and Countermeasures——Based on the Survey in Wenjiang District and Jintang County, Chengdu City

We conduct questionnaire survey of migrant workers in Wenjiang District and Jintang County of Chengdu City,respectively,using the method of key-point investigation and the sampling survey. We describe the status quo of the sample migrant workers' participation in the New Rural Cooperative Medical System,analyze the issues concerning migrant workers' participation in the New Rural Cooperative Medical System,and put forward the countermeasures and recommendations as follows: using many types of medical insurance; establishing universal reimbursement points in strange land and premium-paying system for migrant workers; making the proportion of reimbursement open and transparent; establishing and improving medicare security system for migrant workers.