Types of Internal Migration in Contemporary China

1. Types of Internal Migration in Contemporary China Donald J. Treiman, UCLA PAA, April 29-2 May 2009

2. Outline • Introduction: brief history of migration in China. • Data: our just-completed “Survey of Migration and Health in China,” plus data from my 1996 national probability sample survey and various censuses. • Descriptive analysis: types of internal migration in China.

3. The hukou system • China built an urban welfare state on the backs of the peasants. • In 1955 established an internal registration (“hukou”) system. • Overarching agricultural vs. non-agricultural (“rural” vs. “urban”) status, acquired from mother and very difficult to change (Wu and Treiman 2004). • Local vs. non-local status.

4. Hukousystem (2) • Separate welfare provisions for rural and urban populations; inferior or non-existent for rural population: health care, housing, education, jobs, unemployment, disability, and retirement benefits. • Many services restricted to those with local registration, or require high non-resident fees. Example: education in Beijing. Also, health care. Until recently, housing, etc., connected to danwei(work unit).

5. Migration trends • Severe restrictions on migration from 1961-1978 (end of Great Leap Forward to beginning of Economic Reform) [hotel room example]. • Increasing migration since then, due to • Push: “family responsibility system,” resulting agricultural labor surplus. • Pull: economic expansion in urban areas, resulting in need for low-level labor (factory, construction, service, and sales).

6. Migration trends (2) • Currently 150 million migrants (people living other than where they are registered), 12% of Chinese population. • Migration is complex. Describing that complexity is the topic of this presentation.

7. Types of Migration (1) • Marriage migration • China is patrilocal, so the bride goes to live with or nearby the groom’s family. This is mostly local, to another village, but sometimes is further. Urban pattern is less clear-cut. • Migration to further education • Just as in the U.S., students often go away for college, in China it often happens earlier, due to the paucity of secondary schools in less developed rural areas. Often migration for schooling leads to rural-to-urban or urban-to-urban migration for work.

8. Types of Migration (2) • Migration of place rather than person • Change of hukou status from rural to urban due to incorporation of village into town or city (not automatic—often restricted to those doing non-agricultural work). • Migration for other reasons • Change in family status, desire to be away from or close to family, preferences for living in particular places, change in housing (displace-ment due to urban development), children sent to live with grandparents, etc.

9. Types of Migration (3) • Labor migration. Several cross-cutting dimensions: • Formal (change from rural to urban hukou) vs. informal. • Short distance (e.g., village to nearest town) vs. long distance. • Permanent vs. circular (and, within circular, repeated out-and-back vs. movement from place-to-place before returning home). • Pre-arranged vs. drifting (Chinese term for informal migration, “floating population”—liudongrenkou—may be misleading.

10. Types of Migration (4) • Cross-cutting these distinctions are distinctions between: • Rural-to-rural migration (to work on farms or factories) • Rural-to-urban migration • Urban-to-urban migration • Urban-to-rural migration (rare, often short-term, usually involves retention of urban hukou) • Developing a coherent typology of migration is difficult (subject to reporting error, inadequate distinctions). What follows is work in progress.

11. The 2008 Chinese Migration and Health Survey • Overall goal: analyze determinants, dynamics, and consequences of internal migration for health and well-being. • Sample design • Single nationally representative cross-section of 3,000 adults, with an over-sample of high out-migration and in-migration areas. • Seeking new funding to expand the sample and Create a panel study, with new data every 3 years.

12. Results(All data shown here are weighted) • First some background. • The percentage urban has doubled over the past 20 years, from about a quarter to about half the population (see the next slide). • Since the rural birth rate is higher than the urban birth rate (due to the “1 ½ child policy”—rural families are allowed to try again for a son if their first child is a daughter), urban growth is clearly fueled by migration (and by the expansion of cities to incorporate surrounding villages).

14. More evidence that there is a lot of migration in China (see next slide). • About 40% of the population has moved from one county to another since birth. • The “born elsewhere” rates from the 2000 census are much lower than for the two sample surveys. I am inclined to trust the surveys more, since the 2000 census is widely thought to have drastically under-counted migrants (anyone living in a place for less than 6 months—about half of the migrants to Beijing and Shanghai—was supposed to be counted in the place he left, but even this probably was often not done).

16. Informal migration appears to be increasing over time.

17. About half the population is urban (previously noted), and about half the urban population lacks an urban hukou—a growing urban underclass?

18. Rural-to-rural migration tends to be of two types: • Poor peasants replacing richer peasants who move to urban jobs; • Peasants moving to rural industry (see slide). • As elsewhere, urban workers tend to be disproportionately nonmanual.

19. Rural industry near Hangzhou.

20. On the same road.

21. Women seem better able than men to convert their experience of having “gone out” into non-agricultural jobs after they return.

22. Nearly half of those with urban hukou came from rural origins—about a third because their villages were incorporated (3rd row) and the remainder through personal hukou mobility.

23. About 30 per cent of peasants but only 10 per cent of permanent urban residents have had some experience with labor migration.