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Opportunities and Challenges for Migrant Workers in  Building a Well-off Society in an All-round Way

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Social and Economic Transitions in China and India

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Abstract

“Migrant workers”, who appeared because of China’s modernization and industrialization, are a unique group of people from China’s economic and social transformation. With China’s rapid industrialization, urbanization, marketizations and globalization since the reform and opening to the outside world, the rural–urban segregated labour market structure gradually broke down, resulting in the transfer of many migrant workers to non-agricultural sectors.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Source: Data for the period 1978–2008 were derived from China Agriculture Yearbook, quoted from Tong (2010); Data for the period 2009–2019 were derived from the Migrant Workers Monitoring Report (2009–2020) issued by the National Bureau of Statistics of the People’s Republic of China. According to Tong, about 233.91 million rural labour force transferred to non-agricultural sectors in 2008, which was very close to the figure of 225.42 million given by the National Bureau of Statistics of the People’s Republic of China in the Migrant Workers Monitoring Report. Given that the definition of migrant workers given by the two sources was basically the same, the two sets of data were used simultaneously for comparison.

  2. 2.

    With the evolution of state policies, the name of migrated rural labour force was changed from “migrant labourers”, “migrant workers”, “urban-rural floating population”, to “new urbanites”. Given that the migrant workers defined by the National Bureau of Statistics have the same connotation with the rural labour force described in this article, the term “migrant workers” is used to refer to the same group of people in this paper:

  3. 3.

    Social mentality is a terminology in research area of social psychology. It refers to the thinking style, attitudes, beliefs and values holds by the individuals and social groups.

  4. 4.

    Source: https://www.ilo.org/africa/areas-of-work/labour-migration/policy-frameworks/WCMS_671735/lang--en/index.htm.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Institute of Social Development, CASS, Beijing, China

    Chen Yongyuan

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  1. Chen Yongyuan
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Correspondence to Chen Yongyuan .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. O. P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, India

    Keerty Nakray

  2. Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China

    Zhang Yi

  3. O. P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, India

    John Clammer

  4. O. P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, India

    Wenjuan Zhang

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Yongyuan, C. (2022). Opportunities and Challenges for Migrant Workers in  Building a Well-off Society in an All-round Way. In: Nakray, K., Yi, Z., Clammer, J., Zhang, W. (eds) Social and Economic Transitions in China and India. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-6124-3_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-6124-3_6

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