A migrant worker on a demolition site.	Large numbers of farmers have left their hometowns to seek a living in cities.	Migrant workers call their families after work.

MOU Runan is a sixth-grader at the Beijing Lantian (Blue Sky) Experimental Primary School, a school for children of migrant workers. “I haven’t been home in five years, and I miss it very much. I miss my fellow villagers and things in my hometown,” she wrote on a painting she did entitled My Hometown.

Life on the Move

Old Ni and his wife are redecorating an apartment in a residential area in Fengtai District, in southwest Beijing. Old Ni is smoking a cigarette he rolled himself, and cement stains speckle his camouflage uniform. His wife is using a shovel to stir cement in a small basin, and her red kerchief is covered in gray dust.

Old Ni and his wife do not have a permanent residence in Beijing. The work team of interior decorators that hires them is called “guerrilla” by native Beijing residents. The team consists of several migrant workers with different skills, such as carpenters, painters, tilers and plasterers. Led by a labor contractor, they take on a variety of redecorating projects. At Liuliqiao and elsewhere, migrant laborers wait for employment, squatting by the roadside with tools such as hammers and saws beside them.

Since Old Ni and his work team are engaged in family redecoration projects, they have no insurance. One advantage, however, is that the risk of payment delay is lower. “In general, payments are often delayed when working for companies, but when working for families, payment is never delayed,” he said. Although the work is hard – usually he is on the job more than 10 hours a day – compared to working for companies he feels freer. Old Ni used to work for big companies, such as B & Q, but he complained, “The payment was always delayed, and sometimes amounts were deducted for no reason.”

Common issues migrant workers face are intense work schedules and long working hours. Very few people can enjoy an eight-hour workday. “Most of the industrial workers I know rely on extra working hours to make more money. With an eight-hour day, I earn only RMB 500 a month. I can earn RMB 800 a month because I work an extra five to six hours a day,” said Jin Zhihong. He used to work for a factory in Tianjin that produces nickel-metal hydride batteries, which allowed only two days off per month. To migrant workers in the construction sector, holidays are a luxury. They have to work extra hours almost every day. In the summer, they often work late into the night.

With the permission of the house owners for whom they work, Old Ni and his wife spend the night at the work site. Several years ago, this was common, but now most house owners do not allow workers to spend the night at the site. “Workers shall not cook on the work site, nor spend the night there.” Such rules, which are followed by most big remodeling companies, have changed work practices. Sometimes, the labor contractor may rent a room near the work site for migrant workers, where they can sleep on the floor. Old Ni and his fellow workers bring an electric stove with them to boil noodles on the sly. They are reluctant to spend RMB 5 for a box lunch. Together, Old Ni and his wife have an income of RMB 100 per day, but they save it for their son and daughter, who are attending school in their hometown. Parents and children are able to meet once a year during the Spring Festival, and the situation has remained unchanged for five or six years.

In early 2008, Beijing’s “Home of Migrant Workers” Cultural Development Center organized a painting exhibition for children of migrant workers. More than 10,000 pupils from over 20 schools for children of migrant workers registered. Most of the paintings depicted scenes from their transient lives. Mou Runan’s entry, entitled My Hometown, described her hometown as she remembers it, since she has not returned for five years. In the painting, children play games on a lawn in front of tree-shaded homes. Another painting depicted a school for children of migrant workers in Beijing. The walls are painted over with large crosses, the symbol of dismantlement. “Our school will be dismantled. Where can I go to school?” Next to the school is a tear-stained face.

The theme of the exhibition is “Drifting Aspirations.” Even migrant workers who have brought their families with them are faced with the predicament of moving around from place to place. Except in manufacturing, workers in most sectors in which migrants are engaged, such as construction and services, are transient. When a project is completed, they have to seek employment on other projects. Therefore, moving is common. Even so, migrant workers who bring their families with them are envied by those who cannot, though very often four or five members of a family live crowded into a 10-square-meter room. The children, who attend schools especially for children of migrant workers, are envied by children who cannot go to the cities with their parents, since the former are able to “see skyscrapers and learn to use computers.”

Sun Heng, a leader of the “Home of Migrant Workers,” said the situation will not improve in the near future, and in coming decades, a migrating population will become a constant feature of Chinese society. According to Hu Angang, director of the Center for China Study at Tsinghua University, by 2030 China’s urban population will increase to 900 million-1 billion, from 600 million at present.

A Problem of Belonging

On a double-decker bus traveling between Beijing West Railway Station and the northwest suburbs of Beijing, one can see migrant workers hauling their belongings in woven nylon bags and trunks. One month after the Spring Festival (the Chinese lunar New Year, which fell on February 7 this year), migrant workers could still be seen returning to Beijing from their hometowns.

“Please put your luggage in a proper place, and sit properly,” said the bus conductor as he helped passengers stow away their luggage. “Bus conductors on the buses treat migrant workers very well, which makes us feel comfortable,” said Xiao Chen, who returned from Jiangxi Province to Beijing. She works at a restaurant run by her fellow villagers in Xibeiwang, in the northwest suburbs of Beijing. Her hands are a bit coarse, but from her permed hair and high-heel boots one can see her pursuit of city fashions. She said that a few years ago she was often treated with disdain on buses because of her Jiangxi accent. Now, she says, she is happy with the changes in attitude on the part of bus conductors.

“At first, city people complained that migrant workers made the social order and hygiene worse. But gradually, they began to feel that migrant workers were indispensable to their lives,” said Sun Heng. “During the Spring Festival, when migrant workers return home for family reunions, urbanites find it difficult to hire babysitters, even at inflated prices, and no one collects the garbage for days.” When the local government and inhabitants realized the indispensability of migrant workers, they began to pay attention to the issue and responded. Many local governments have taken measures to provide more conveniences for migrant workers and to make migrant workers feel more welcome.

Even so, migrant workers and native residents feel they inhabit two separate worlds. Most migrant workers, even those who have made fortunes, feel as though they do not belong. Fudan University, for example, has surveyed some 30,000 migrant workers in China’s major cities. The results show that fewer than eight percent of the respondents were satisfied with their lives. The problems they complained most about were “discrimination,” “excessive working hours” and “low pay.” Among them, 68 percent of the respondents said urban inhabitants did not accept them completely. Sun Heng said that migrant workers never called themselves “farmers-turned-workers.” That was a title imposed on them by urbanites.

Aside from the obvious differences in social status, Wang Meiyan explains the sense of rejection from the point of view of the household registration system and occupational divisions. She points out that some migrant workers have become project contractors and others own their own businesses. Their incomes are much higher than those of native inhabitants, and some have even bought apartments. But they still do not regard themselves as urbanites. “The key is that they don’t have permanent household registration in the cities, and there are obstacles to enjoying the urban welfare system.” In addition, most migrant workers are engaged in low-status jobs, such as building, cleaning, babysitting, and security, which urbanites are reluctant to engage in. Therefore, she concludes, “Migrant workers and native inhabitants live and work in two totally different worlds.”

According to Wang Meiyan, the incomes of migrant workers are generally lower than those of native urbanites. This pattern is called the “double dual market.” To protect the employment needs of native inhabitants, local governments usually set barriers to household registration. She said that the key lies in the fact that the current development level of the Chinese economy is not adequate to provide the same welfare protection for all of China’s 1.3 billion people. Zhengzhou, Shijiazhuang and certain other cities once experimented with opening up the urban permanent household registration system, but soon stopped. “The limited resources in the cities cannot bear the heavy load, especially regarding communications, education and hygiene,” she said.

To eliminate differences in salary and welfare between migrant workers and urbanites, there is still a long way to go. Aside from dealing with house owners while working on redecorating projects, Old Ni has little contact with urbanites. His favorite pastime is talking about his children with fellow workers during the lunch break, and his only entertainment is a small black radio he listens to while working.

A Turning Point in the Workforce

After the Spring Festival and the busy farm seasons, railway stations and long-distance bus stations in various big cities are the best places to observe the shifting labor force. During peak periods, millions of farmers leave their villages every day to seek employment in cities. Among them are a considerable number of young newcomers.

However, despite the constant stream of migrant workers pouring into the cities, more and more employers have begun to worry. Their main headache involves pay rises for migrant workers and an inadequate labor supply, according to a recent survey. One sample survey by the Guangdong Provincial Labor and Social Security Department, taken in February 2008, showed that Guangdong Province lacks 16,400 ordinary workers, 1,700 skilled workers and 800 managerial and technical personnel. The monthly salary of RMB 960 is not attractive to migrant workers who work in the textile and shoemaking sectors.

According to Li Yijie, who works at the Xiamen Home of Migrant Workers in Fujian Province, almost every factory in Xiamen now has a notice recruiting workers, stating, “Employment is unconditional.” Even unskilled newcomers newly arrived from villages are in great demand. In Xiamen, a coastal city with electronic components processing as the main industry, migrant workers, whose number exceeds one million, make up half the city’s population.

“A shortage of migrant workers” is the most frequent phrase to be heard in recent years. Wang Meiyan said that the first real shortage of migrant workers occurred in 2004. Some manufacturing enterprises in the Pearl River Delta could not employ enough skilled workers. “At that time, certain experts generally thought it was a structural and temporary shortage of workers.”

However, the optimism of the experts faded soon after in light of the realities. A shortage of migrant workers soon spread from Guangdong Province to various other coastal cities, including Tianjin in the north. Not long after, central and western China, which used to be labor suppliers, also experienced a shortage of migrant workers.

Many experts have concluded after a comprehensive analysis of the current situation that a turning point will occur with regard to the shortage of migrant workers. Wang Meiyan said that in recent years, wages for migrant workers have seen a sharp increase, directly reflecting changes in supply and demand for labor. In Xiamen, the starting monthly wage for migrant workers has increased from RMB 1,200 to RMB 1,500. The income gap between working in cities and farming in villages is the incentive prompting farmers to leave their villages for the cities. But following a reform of the agricultural tax, farmers’ incomes have increased, greatly narrowing the gap. Second-generation migrant workers (born in the 1980s and later) differ greatly from first-generation migrant workers. “Second-generation migrant workers have a higher educational level, and their expectations of jobs are also higher, including wages. All these factors have led to the shortage,” said Wang Meiyan. But she believes there is another important factor, namely the structure of China’s labor force. Simply put, the countryside has a limited labor force, and the supply of workers has turned from “unlimited supply” to “relative scarcity.”

Wang Meiyan admits that a few years ago, the Chinese government did not fully understand the supply and demand of labor, thinking that the supply of workers was unlimited. “To adapt to the change is a test for any government that experiences it,” said Wang Meiyan. “One important result is that enterprises and the government have to protect the rights and interests of laborers, and raise their social status and improve their treatment.”

Sun Heng and the Beijing Home of Migrant Workers are making preparations to build a migrant labor cultural museum. He has collected the various certificates that migrant workers are required to obtain, such as the Temporary Residence Certificate and the Health Certificate, and various “payment-to-come” slips that employers scratch out and sign whenever there is a payment delay. “In the past, to obtain a Temporary Residence Certificate migrant workers had to pay several hundred RMB, but now they need to pay only RMB 5 per person.” More importantly, “Even if they have not obtained such a certificate, they will not be forced back to their hometowns.” But before 2003, it was commonplace for migrant workers to be forced back if they did not have such certificates. “Changes in government are obvious,” said Wang Meiyan. “Now the phenomenon of payment delay has basically been eliminated.” Between 2001 and 2005, the research institute for which she works made two comparable surveys in several cities, and the results of the surveys were positive.

There are more changes in this respect. Government-funded free training for migrant workers has been systematically implemented nationwide. In Sichuan Province alone, the government trains two to three million migrant workers annually, and the recruitment meetings for migrant workers are free of charge. Migrant workers have also been elected as deputies to the National People’s Congress, raising their political clout.

Wang Meiyan said that the Labor Contract Law may provide guarantees for both migrant workers and employers. “Employers need not worry that migrant workers may quit after working a few days, and migrant workers need not worry that employers may delay payment and refuse to sign labor contracts,” she said. But that is an ideal situation, and reality depends on enforcing the rules.