Can migrant workers still go back to the countryside?

Can migrant workers still go back to the countryside? The true story of a migrant worker in Anhui

Recently, the General Office of the State Council issued a plan to promote the settlement of 100 million non-registered people in cities, requiring "to promote the families of agricultural migrant workers who have the ability to work and live stably in cities and towns to settle in cities." To solve the problem of migrant workers settling in cities is an important part of the current national strategy to promote a new type of urbanization. With regard to migrant workers, there is a popular view that migrant workers "can not stay in the city, but can not go back to the countryside". If there is no proper solution, migrant workers will become a major social problem. The judgment of the destination of migrant workers determines how to implement the new urbanization strategy and how to formulate relevant policies.

The Choice of migrant Workers entering the City and returning to their hometown

First, let's take a look at the true story of a migrant worker in Anhui. In December 2015, we organized a survey in Shanghai, during which we got to know a migrant worker. The 36-year-old migrant worker, surnamed Wang, is from Lu'an, Anhui Province. Almost all of Master Wang's large family are migrant workers, and the situation and choices of several generations of his relatives in urban and rural mobility are very representative.

Master Wang himself first came to work in Shanghai before graduating from high school in 1999. In the first half of 2015, the company where he worked moved to Jiangsu Province. Because his wife and father-in-law were all in Shanghai, Master Wang did not leave with the enterprise. After leaving the enterprise, Master Wang used his Jianghuai private car worth tens of thousands of yuan to run a "black car" in a town in Jiading District and earned more than 200 yuan a day. Master Wang's wife works in the factory for 12 hours a day, takes two days off a month, and earns about 4000 yuan a month. Master Wang's wife is also from Lu'an, Anhui Province. at present, his wife and parents live in the same town.

Master Wang's parents-in-law belong to the first generation of migrant workers. When a flood occurred in the Yangtze-Huaihe River Basin in 1991, the rural house of Master Wang's parents-in-law was destroyed and collapsed. his father-in-law took his wife and children to work in Shanghai ever since. Master Wang's father-in-law, 55, now works as a porter with a salary of 3000 yuan a month. Feeling physically exhausted, Master Wang's father-in-law is ready to return to his hometown village in Shouxian County, Huainan City, where he has been away for 24 years. Before that, two parents-in-law of Master Wang worked in Shanghai and raised three children to start a family. Master Wang's wife, who is the eldest among brother and sister, married Master Wang more than ten years ago. The eldest wife and brother were born in 1987 and married in Shanghai in 2012. their sister-in-law is from Anhui; the second wife and brother, born in 1988, graduated from Anhui University of Science and Technology and previously worked in Nanjing. After the sister-in-law gave birth to the child, the second wife and brother also went to Shanghai's parents. Master Wang's parents-in-law spent a total of more than 600,000 yuan to get married for their two sons. The two old people invested most of their working savings in their sons, and now they are going to build a house in their hometown in order to return home, which is expected to cost more than 100,000 yuan, funded by their two sons.

Master Wang summed up the working characteristics of migrant workers in the city: "Enterprises generally require assembly line workers in workshops to be 35 years old, and their movements over 35 years old can not keep up with them. most of those over 45 years old are engaged in heavy manual labor, such as loading and unloading workers. the construction site is all over the age of 50, dirty and tired, and young people don't want to do it." After more than 20 years in Shanghai, Master Wang's father-in-law has been thinking about where to go in recent years, "whether to stay in Shanghai with his children or his children to follow himself." after some hesitation, he finally chose to return to his hometown in the countryside. and the raw materials for building houses in rural areas have been prepared. In 1991, there were more than 10 fellow villagers in the same village who went to work in Shanghai with Master Wang's parents-in-law. Now five have completed building houses in their hometown and returned to the countryside. Master Wang's parents-in-law and more than 10 other families are regarded as the first generation of migrant workers, who have returned to the countryside one after another after completing the task of providing for the next generation. In fact, not only the first generation of migrant workers are facing the choice of returning home, but also migrant workers in their 30s and 40s like Master Wang are also considering the future. Master Wang thinks he may not be able to stay in Shanghai for a few more years because his son is about to enter junior high school and is under pressure to go to school. Master Wang plans to let his wife take his son back to his hometown and work hard for a few more years to earn money. This year, Master Wang set aside 150000 yuan from his working savings to build a house for his father in his hometown in the countryside. Master Wang and his wife are still discussing whether to buy a house with a mortgage loan in Lu'an, so that they can "go back to the city to do some business" in the future.

Migrant workers in their twenties and thirties, who are younger than Master Wang, also face choices. Master Wang's first wife and brother, 28 years old, work in the factory for 4500 yuan a month. The eldest sister-in-law partnered with fellow villagers to open a clothing store with an income of nearly 10,000 yuan a month. The first wife, brother and wife's own accumulation, together with a gift fee and a house purchase fee given by their parents at the time of marriage, can make a down payment on buying a house in the town where they work (the price of local commercial housing is about 10,000 yuan per square meter). Despite the high income, the eldest wife and brother have never made up their mind to buy a house in Shanghai. The reason is: "the appearance of the city in Shanghai is not as good as that of the post-80s generation, first, housing prices are unstable, and second, employment is unstable. If the enterprise is eliminated by the market, you will personally go bankrupt. Migrant workers without technical expertise will start from scratch when they change enterprises." Most of the migrant workers who are front-line workers are highly alternative in the urban job market, which leads to their unstable expectations of urban life.

We also interviewed other migrant workers in the survey. The examples of Master Wang's family are not special. These cases show that migrant workers have a clear and similar track of entering the city. Usually, young migrant workers in their twenties have a strong motivation and vision to integrate into the city. 34-year-old middle-aged and young migrant workers began to invest their working savings to build houses and buy houses in their hometown rural areas and plan to return home to start their own business. middle-aged and elderly migrant workers in their fifties and sixties voluntarily quit the city and gradually return to their hometown. The popular view that migrant workers "cannot go back to the countryside" is viewed from the point of view of a small number of successful people who go to the city. People who have successfully entered the city have been given more opportunities and better conditions for urban life, and it is of course impossible for them to return to the relatively declining rural areas. But for most farmers who struggle but are unable to settle in the city, returning to the countryside is not a bad choice compared with falling into urban slums. The general public usually only see the farmers' willingness to go to the city for a better life, and ignore the farmers' choice of returning to their hometown after they are unsuccessful in the city. In 2008, the financial crisis spread to China's migrant processing industry, resulting in the unemployment of about 20 million migrant workers, which did not cause a huge social impact at that time, mainly because these unemployed migrant workers returned to the countryside smoothly. At that time, some farmers thought that they had not returned home for many years, so they just took advantage of the suspension of production by enterprises to "go home and have a look", while parents who stayed in the countryside thought that their children's return to their hometown was just "an extra pair of chopsticks." The progressive and retractable urban-rural relationship builds the foundation for the steady progress of urbanization in China.

Going back is also a choice.

There are many reasons why migrant workers can go back to the countryside. From the perspective of individual life expectations, although urban areas have more economic opportunities and better supply of public services than rural areas, and it is worth looking forward to becoming an urban middle class, it is not unacceptable to return to rural areas after unsuccessful entry into the city. The survey found that not only some "dirty work" such as the construction industry is mainly done by migrant workers, but also in factories, Shanghai locals work overtime less than migrant workers, because migrant workers have a stronger willingness to earn money. Shanghai farmers believe that many locals who go to work in enterprises can get 2020 yuan a month of the Shanghai minimum wage, and the main purpose of locals to go to work is to pay old-age insurance and wait to reach age to get a pension. Observing outsiders, Shanghai farmers said: "outsiders are paid overtime. They work 12 hours a day, and they also work overtime on Sundays. Outsiders come to work to make money. They work hard and save money to take back to their hometown." Like Master Wang and his parents-in-law in the previous example, at the beginning of their entry into the city, migrant workers positioned the city as a place for employment, and they took the initiative to work overtime and engage in heavy manual labour. the purpose is to feedback the income of urban workers to their hometown in rural areas. The goal of supporting migrant workers' hard work in cities is not to live in the urban middle class, but to improve their lives relative to their original lives. Building houses and marrying daughters-in-law and raising the next generation are the driving force for most migrant workers to struggle for. From the point of view of farmers, the city is not a place to stay, and the countryside is not necessarily a place that cannot go back.