Migration, Policy and Household Strategies in China, 1985-2004

University Of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

Increase of human mobility is both a driver and an outcome of the structural changes that many formerly socialist economies have experienced over the past two decades. Conventional thinking on migration, based primarily on capitalist economies, cannot fully explain the recent dramatic surge in migration in transitional economies such as China. Policy adjustments, a hallmark of China's economic reforms, and household-level strategies, are central to explaining rural-urban migration in China. This project will document the major changes in the volume, direction, and composition of migration in China in the past two decades and identify the determinants of the patterns of migration and how these determinants have changed. The investigator will examine how policy changes, especially those related to the household registration (hukou) reforms, have affected the decision-making and process of migration. The project will focus on household strategies that led to the decisions to not migrate, migrate, or return, and how these strategies have been shaped by policy, gender relations and ideology, life-cycle events, and other household considerations. By comparing and analyzing data from China's 1990 and 2000 censuses, the investigator will pinpoint how migration and its determinants have changed. The investigator will conduct a survey of 7,000 rural households in two major origin provinces of migrants (Sichuan and Anhui), which aims at documenting possible multiple episodes of migration, circular migration, and return migration. Data from this survey will facilitate analysis using event-history techniques, thus enabling investigations of the effects of policy change and household considerations on migration decision-making. The investigator will also conduct in-depth interviews of 300 rural households that were previously interviewed 10 years ago. These interviews will likewise provide longitudinal information as well as qualitative material that will enrich the understanding of social and power relations within households, their relations with national and local-level policies, and their impacts on household strategies related to migration. This project will provide insights for understanding not only the sizable "floating population" in China but rural-urban migrants in developing and transitional countries. These migrants are the key to the social and economic trajectories of the cities and the countryside in these economies. Findings from this project will inform researchers and policy-makers as they debate policies and issues on migration, urbanization, labor, employment, and political and social instability. The project will advance research collaboration between US and Chinese scholars, provide research opportunities for international students, help identify methodological and conceptual improvements in undergraduate and graduate teaching, and enable the life stories and experiences of rural Chinese to be accessible to broad audiences.