Abstract
Rural-to-urban migration typically accompanies the road to a society’s industrialization and urbanization. These large population flows bring social and political risks if societies fail to manage such movements and avoid unintended upheavals. In North Africa and the Middle East, for example, dramatic urbanization was an important social condition for recent social movements in those areas. According to Wallace (2014), cities in these regions attract massive numbers of migrants from rural areas, who can pose a threat to authoritarian regimes. When a severe situation persists in urban areas, such as soaring food prices or high unemployment, this can mobilize the affected population, which can result in collective action.
Internal migration in contemporary China is unprecedented in human history in terms of its magnitude and dynamics. In addition, China seems to be an exceptional case in being able to maintain economic and political stability in putting the “floating population” under control. Li Sun’s new book, Rural Urban Migration and Policy Intervention in China helps to explain how China incorporates tens of millions of migrants into its urban sector.
Swiss writer Max Frisch once said, “We wanted workers, but we got people instead.” Similarly, Chinese migrants are viewed as “workers” by employers and authorities, but they are also “people” with desires and needs. Sun’s monograph explores the coping strategies of migrant workers when they encounter a variety of problems in the destination regions. It is based on the author’s interviews with 33 migrant workers originating from a county in Chongqing Municipality in southwestern China, three local officials in the sending area and eight employers in the destination regions, including Beijing, Tianjin and Fujian. Sun examined the meanings of “coping strategy” by probing what migrants do when they seek for a job, when they become sick or have a work injury, or when they suffer from wage exploitation. Sun also examines four government policies which aim to help migrants; namely, the Skills Training Program for Migrant Workers (introduced in 2003), the New Rural Medical Cooperative Scheme (also introduced in 2003), the Circular on Migrant Workers Participating in Work-related Injury Insurance (in 2004) and the Circular on Managing Wage Payment to Migrant Workers (in 2004).
The author identifies different types of coping. According to the author’s definition, a migrant adopts “administrative coping” when he/she makes a claim to avail of support provided by official policies; he/she uses “social coping” when resorting to his/her social networks; political coping is occasionally employed when migrants take collective actions to reach their ends. Sun tries to examine the effectiveness of China’s policies related to migrants by comparing the frequency of administrative coping activities with that of the other two coping options. She finds that migrant workers tend to rely more on their friends and co-workers than government agencies for job seeking or solving labor disputes. As social coping is the prevalent strategy used by migrants, the author draws the conclusion that “most of these migration policies fail to achieve desired outcomes by and large” (p. 173). One exception is the health insurance programs, which most migrants participate in, though sometimes they have to return to their origin places to claim medical compensation (p. 158).
Although the sample used in the book is too small to generalize the findings to the migrant population in China, other studies do report similar patterns (Fan, 2008: 96–100; Young, 2013: 59). When Sun did her field work between 2010 and 2011, the majority of migrant workers did not participate in the major social welfare programs in their destination cities, according to a nationwide official survey (Tian, 2015), and administrative coping activities were less observed by researchers. However, it might be overstated to simply interpret the low coverage of social welfare as a failure.
In China, the relationship between official policies and social coping activities is largely complementary rather than substitutive. According to Sun’s observation, job seeking through social networks is the optimal strategy for migrants because of mutual trust between members belonging to the same network. The role of social networks and social capital is well-understood in the field of migration, and the fact that Chinese migrants resort to these resources is not unusual. By comparison, the recruitment fairs organized by the government in sending counties have been found to match only a few migrants with jobs in the destination cities (p. 114).
As for wage exploration and work injury, the government does have the authority and duty to address these problems as a matter of social justice. In a tone sympathetic to migrant workers, Sun reports several policy problems based on her field work, such as lack of legal protection, slow administrative procedure and the quelling of labor protest. Although these problems are common in China, the author seldom questions the feasibility of implementing China’s labor regulations in the real world, and instead puts the blame on employers for violating the regulations and the government for paying inadequate effort in monitoring employers’ misbehaviors.
For instance, work-related injury insurance in China is not applicable to some firms and businesses. Sun’s interviews suggest that, in most provinces, the coverage rates of work-related injury insurance are low because the incidence of accidents in the service sector is low. Thus, only a few employers purchase injury insurance for their workers. In this regard, the policy-makers should lower the insurance rate of firms in the service sector rather than require all firms to contribute at the same rate. In addition, Sun categorizes “exploitative behaviors” of employers into four types, and views all of them as a violation of China’s labor law. In fact, wage arrears can be caused by different reasons, including financial difficulties and dishonesty of employers. Sun also mentions chain debts as affecting the capacity of companies to pay their workers—these occur when a product does not do well and companies therefore cannot pay their suppliers, and suppliers, in turn, face difficulties in paying their workers (p. 125). In other words, it is not correct to label all cases of wage arrears as “exploitation.”
As mentioned, political coping is occasionally used by migrant workers to claim their rights or benefits. Political coping in China is not as common as in democratic countries, and Sun attributes this difference to China’s “non-electoral regime” and the state’s control over social movements (p. 170). While the two factors do matter, a recent study reveals that Chinese workers’ risk-averse attitude and internalized acceptance of authoritarian rule also helps explain the weak resistance of this group (Lin, 2020).
Sun’s book on the coping strategies of migrant workers has enriched our understanding of this mobile segment of the Chinese population. The social networks of migrants are largely embedded in the labor market and provide them with an informal safety net that helps them when faced with different risks. Although the assistance of social networks, supplemented by welfare policies, contributes to the social resilience of migrant workers in China, the government still needs to make its own “coping strategy” of treating migrants not merely as workers but as human beings.