Migration and Social Protection in China
Migration and Social Protection in China

Author: Ingrid Nielsen

Publisher: World Scientific

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 9812790497

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China has an estimated 120?150 million internal migrants from the countryside living in its cities. These people are the engine that has been driving China's high rate of economic growth. However, until recently, little or no attention has been given to the establishment of a social protection regime for migrant workers. This volume examines the key issues involved in establishing social protection for them, including a critical examination of deficiencies in existing arrangements and an in-depth study of proposals that have been offered for extending social security coverage. Featuring contributions from leading academics outside China who have written on the topic as well as experts from leading Chinese academic institutions such as Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Development Research Center in the State Council, this volume provides a comprehensive account from both inside and outside China.

Labour Migration and Social Development in Contemporary China
Labour Migration and Social Development in Contemporary China

Author: Rachel Murphy

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2008-10-08

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 113403377X

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Since the mid-1980s, mass migration from the countryside to urban areas has been one of the most dramatic and noticeable changes in China. Labour migration has not only exerted a profound impact on China’s economy; it has also had far-reaching consequences for its social development. This book examines labour migration in China, focusing on the social dimensions of this phenomenon, as well as on the economic aspects of the migration and development relationship. It provides in-depth coverage of pertinent topics which include the role of labour migration in poverty alleviation; the social costs of remittance and regional, gender and generational inequalities in their distribution; hukou reform and the inclusion of migrants in urban social security and medical insurance systems; the provision of schools for migrants’ children; the provision of sexual health services to migrants; the housing conditions of migrants; the mobilization of women workers’ social networks to improve labour protection; and the role of NGOs in providing social services for migrants. Throughout, it pays particular attention to policy implications, including the impact of the recent policy shift of the Chinese government, which has made social issues more central to national development policies, and has initiated policy reforms pertaining to migration.

China's Great Migration
China's Great Migration

Author: Bradley M. Gardner

Publisher: Independent Institute

Published: 2017-07-01

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 1598132245

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China's rise over the past several decades has lifted more than half of its population out of poverty and reshaped the global economy. What has caused this dramatic transformation? In China's Great Migration: How the Poor Built a Prosperous Nation, author Bradley Gardner looks at one of the most important but least discussed forces pushing China's economic development: the migration of more than 260 million people from their birthplaces to China's most economically vibrant cities. By combining an analysis of China's political economy with current scholarship on the role of migration in economic development, China's Great Migration shows how the largest economic migration in the history of the world has led to a bottom-up transformation of China. Gardner draws from his experience as a researcher and journalist working in China to investigate why people chose to migrate and the social and political consequences of their decisions. In the aftermath of China's Cultural Revolution, the collapse of totalitarian government control allowed millions of people to skirt migration restrictions and move to China's growing cities, where they offered a massive pool of labor that propelled industrial development, foreign investment, and urbanization. Struggling to respond to the demands of these migrants, the Chinese government loosened its grip on the economy, strengthening property rights and allowing migrants to employ themselves and each other, spurring the Chinese economic miracle. More than simply a narrative of economic progress, China's Great Migration tells the human story of China's transformation, featuring interviews with the men and women whose way of life has been remade. In its pages, readers will learn about the rebirth of a country and millions of lives changed, hear what migration can tell us about the future of China, and discover what China's development can teach the rest of the world about the role of market liberalization and economic migration in fighting poverty and creating prosperity.

Out to Work
Out to Work

Author: Arianne M. Gaetano

Publisher: Hong Kong University Press

Published: 2015-04-24

Total Pages: 185

ISBN-13: 9888208535

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Out to Work is a fresh, engaging account of the lives of a group of rural Chinese women who, while still in their teens, moved from villages to Beijing to take up work as maids, office cleaners, hotel chambermaids, and schoolteachers. By pursuing new opportunities afforded by migration and strategically applying accumulated knowledge and resources, these women were able to forge better lives for themselves and their families. But as this book also makes clear, broader social inequalities persist to make these women's futures precarious. "This book's unique approach offers readers an intimate look at the impact of labor migration on young women over a ten-year period. We follow Gaetano's informants as they adapt to Beijing, visit their home villages, and move on to new jobs and postmarital homes. Gaetano does an excellent job showing how these young female migrants navigate constraints and challenges, enhancing their own and their family's social and economic status."—Hong Zhang, Colby College "This fresh, highly readable book demonstrates vividly how gender norms and rural-urban inequalities not only shaped women's identities and aspirations but also had palpable physical and material consequences for them. Yet despite the discrimination and hardship they experienced, they were able to build better lives for themselves. Gaetano's book convincingly shows that labor migration has increased many rural women's possibilities for exercising agency."—Rachel Murphy, University of Oxford

Contemporary China
Contemporary China

Author: Tamara Jacka

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-09-30

Total Pages: 327

ISBN-13: 1107292298

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China's rapid economic growth, modernization and globalization have led to astounding social changes. Contemporary China provides a fascinating portrayal of society and social change in the contemporary People's Republic of China. This book introduces readers to key sociological perspectives, themes and debates about Chinese society. It explores topics such as family life, citizenship, gender, ethnicity, labour, religion, education, class and rural/urban inequalities. It considers China's imperial past, the social and institutional legacies of the Maoist era, and the momentous forces shaping it in the present. It also emphasises diversity and multiplicity, encouraging readers to consider new perspectives and rethink Western stereotypes about China and its people. Real-life case studies illustrate the key features of social relations and change in China. Definitions of key terms, discussion questions and lists of further reading help consolidate learning. Including full-colour maps and photographs, this book offers remarkable insight into Chinese society and social change.

Rural Urban Migration and Policy Intervention in China
Rural Urban Migration and Policy Intervention in China

Author: Li Sun

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-06-26

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 9811080933

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This book examines rural-urban migration policies in China, and considers how Chinese workers cope with migration events in the context of these policies. It explores the contribution of migrant workers to the Chinese economy, the impact of changes within the ‘hukou’ system (household registration) and the impact of recent migration policies promoting rural-urban migration and targeting key events during migrant workers’ migration trajectories - job-seeking, wage exploitation, work injuries and illness - namely the corresponding ‘Skills Training Program for Migrant Workers’, the ‘Circular on Managing Wage Payment to Migrant Workers’, the ‘Circular on Migrant Workers Participating in Work-Related Injury Insurance’, and the ‘New Rural Medical Cooperative Scheme’ (Health Insurance). Through in-depth interviews, it examines how when facing such challenges, migrant workers choose to either make a claim under existing policies, or use other coping strategies. The book notably proposes a typology of “coping” which includes a variety of administrative coping, political coping and social coping, and considers how workers in China harness the power of civil groups and social networks.

Critical Issues in Contemporary China
Critical Issues in Contemporary China

Author: Czeslaw Tubilewicz

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-12-12

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13: 1317422988

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Critical Issues in Contemporary China: Unity, Stability and Development comprehensively examines key problems crucial to understanding modern-day China. Organized around three interrelated themes of unity, stability and development, each chapter explores distinct issues and debate their significance for China domestically and for Beijing’s engagement with the wider world. While presenting contending explanatory approaches, contributors advance arguments to further critical discussion on selected topics. Main issues analysed include: political change military transformation legal reforms economic development energy security environmental degradation food security and safety demographic trends migration and urbanization labour unrest health and education social inequalities ethnic conflicts Hong Kong’s integration cross-Strait relations. Given its thorough and up-to-date assessment of major political, social and economic challenges facing China, this fully revised and substantially expanded new edition is an essential read for any student of Chinese Studies.

Practicing Citizenship in Contemporary China
Practicing Citizenship in Contemporary China

Author: Sophia Woodman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-04-02

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13: 0429806906

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This book examines citizenship as practiced in China today from a variety of angles. Citizenship in China—and elsewhere in the Global South—has often been perceived as either a distorted echo of the ‘real’ democratic version in Europe and North America, or an orientalized ‘other’ that defines what citizenship is not. By contrast, this book sees Chinese citizenship as an aspect of a connected modernity that is still unfolding. The book focuses on three key tensions: a state preference for sedentarism and governing citizens in place vs. growing mobility, sometimes facilitated by the state; a perception that state-building and development requires a strong state vs. ideas and practices of participatory citizenship; and submission of the individual to the ‘collective’ (state, community, village, family, etc.) vs. the rising salience of conceptions of self-development and self-making projects. Examining manifestations of these tensions can contribute to thinking about citizenship beyond China, including the role of the local in forming citizenship orders; how individualization works in the absence of liberal individualism; and how ‘social citizenship’ is increasingly becoming a reward to ‘good citizens’, rather than a mechanism for achieving citizen equality. This book was originally published as a Special Issue of the journal Citizenship Studies.

The Children of China's Great Migration
The Children of China's Great Migration

Author: Rachel Murphy

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-08-20

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 110883485X

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Rachel Murphy explores Chinese children's experience of having migrant parents and the impact this has on family relationships in China.

Handbook of Chinese Migration
Handbook of Chinese Migration

Author: Robyn R. Iredale

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Published: 2015-12-18

Total Pages: 345

ISBN-13: 1783476648

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The recent unprecedented scale of Chinese migration has had far-reaching consequences. Within China, many villages have been drained of their young and most able workers, cities have been swamped by the ‘floating population’, and many rural migrants have been unable to integrate into urban society. Internationally, the Chinese have become increasingly more mobile. This Handbook provides a unique collection of new and original research on internal and international Chinese migration and its effects on the sense of belonging of migrants.