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This Research Note employs age data to assess whether China’s internal migrants have become more settled since 2010. The aim is to answer the crucial question of whether recent hukou reform initiatives have achieved their goals of improving migrant settlement. We extend a method from existing research that examines two key aspects of settlement – family togetherness and long-term stay of migrants – through analyzing age profiles of migrant stock. Specifically, by scrutinizing age data from the 2010 and 2020 censuses, we evaluate whether the child and elderly dependents of migrants are more engaged in migration and whether migrants growing old can better remain in the destinations. The results show that from 2010 to 2020, the age distribution of migrants became slightly more even across all age groups, yet it was still concentrated in young adults – the overall shape remained largely unchanged. This indicates a small improvement in settlement, which is unsatisfactory given the various hukou reform initiatives aimed at substantially increasing settlement opportunities in the last 10 years. Much greater efforts on hukou reform and support for migrants are needed. Furthermore, our research highlights the utility of age data in assessing the actual extent of migrant settlement, as opposed to the exclusive focus on settlement intentions, which are common in existing studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese institutional arrangements, particularly the hukou system, hinder long-term settlement of internal migrants by limiting their access to social benefits. This article proposes a new method for assessing migrant settlement: the use of age data to investigate the link between migrant “flow” and “stock”. We contend that migrants’ inability to settle mainly derives from two sources: the difficulties in maintaining migrant family togetherness, and the impediments to long-term residence of migrants themselves. Age-related indices were developed to compare China’s internal migration with other countries’ internal and international migration. The results indicate a “China difference” in migration age patterns – child and elderly dependents of migrant workers are discouraged from migrating, while migrants growing old tend to return to the origins than to remain in the destinations. Consequently, family togetherness and long-term residence in the destinations are often unachievable for migrants. Our analyses highlight China’s unique migrant labor regime, where temporary migrant workers are continuously “recycled” to keep destinations’ workforce “forever young”, reducing production costs of Chinese goods in global markets. Methodologically, our age-based “mobile-to-settled” transition framework and “settlement rate” of migrants in the transition are of value in examining migrant settlement chances more generally, applicable to internal and international migration beyond China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research note explains the important, somewhat unknown, hukou category: the collective hukou (jiti hukou, or JTHK) in urban China. We first briefly explain the hukou terminology and operations of the JTHK, then analyze its origin, highlighting its close relationship with the work unit (danwei) system in Mao's era. The note then examines different types of JTHK introduced since the early 1980s to address new questions created by the separation of the hukou and the danwei systems. Our discussion seeks to shed light on the complexities of the changes in the hukou system that functions and affects urban society, social geography, especially in relation to migrants who have college education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is woven into the fabric of territorial demarcation between rural and urban space, which shapes people's life chances. Grounded in the study of rural-urban and local/non-local inequalities, we explore the identity constructions of people-in-between – rural local villagers (commonly named "urban villagers") in chengzhongcun (villages-in-the-cities). Based on in-depth interviews and participant observations in Shenzhen and Guangzhou, we found stereotypes of rural local people's as ill-mannered and lazy; yet economically well-off. Women and men who considered themselves rural locals challenge the stereotype by drawing upon the gender- and class-appropriate understandings of their identities. Rural local women crafted a "model woman discourse" by emphasizing their traditional Chinese feminine traits, othering rural migrants for manipulating sex for upward mobility, and criticizing urban women for being too assertive in relation to men. Some rural local men, in contrast, created a subculture that defined their version of success; others embraced urban masculinity. In any case, the processes of identity construction often reinforce stereotypes based on rural/urban and local/non-local divide, class, and gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops the notion of "more-than-viral" geographies of the covid-19 pandemic. It introduces a set of commentaries on the pandemic in the Eurasian region and its links with the rest of the globe. Taking "more-than-human" perspectives in Human Geography as an inspiration, it develops ways of analyzing the covid-19 pandemic as a "more-than-viral" phenomenon in which human and viral agencies are entangled. In this Introduction to the special issue, we focus on three key intertwined sets of processes that run through this volume, and which both shape, and are being radically reshaped by, the pandemic: interconnections, inequalities, and the geopolitics of disease. Each of these inter-related processes is developed in various ways by the commentaries which make up the special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the employment of migrant workers in China. Our research has estimated that nationally, at least 30–50 million migrants lost their jobs in late March, far more than the local urban workers. An online survey also indicates that the rural-hukou population have borne the brunt of the outbreak. More than 90% rural-hukou migrant workers could not find work as of late February, compared to 42% for urban-hukou migrant workers. Those who are less educated and low skilled had also a higher rate of unemployment. At the same time, there is a serious mismatch between workers covered by the social safety net and those who really need it. Both across the Chinese population at large and within the migrant population itself, the pandemic has exacerbated the preexisting inequalities along the household registration system line. We call for a more substantive reform of the system so that migrant workers can be integrated into the national social safety net and be protected in the next crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's population has been in the international spotlight for decades not only because it is the world's largest, but also because the "one-child" family planning policy, introduced in 1980, was the world's biggest, and probably also one of the harshest, social engineering projects implemented by a state.[1] The policy, which restricted Chinese new couples to stringent birth limits for 35 years,[2] touched almost every family. To sum up, while LBC exist in many developing countries, the percentage of children "left behind" in China is extraordinarily high, as noted by Beh and Yao ([4]).[14] For children of migrants in China, the LBC size or those in single-parent or no-parent families are also overwhelming (88 million), accounting for 85% of that group. Before the abolition of the one-child policy at the beginning of 2016, China's population policy in large cities had been to strictly limit births and in-migration. However, Beijing's low percentage of children, especially in 2010 (only 8.6%) for such a large metropolis is quite extraordinary by world standards.[18] With continuing low fertility and high life expectancy, tough policies to deter new migrants raise serious questions about the viability and the associated problems in the near future, as I did earlier (Chan [19]). The current family-averse migration policies need to be reversed to allow migrant children to stay with their parents, as is done in Vietnam, which also operates under a household registration system, originally modeled after China's (Siu and Unger [68]). [Extracted from the article]

This paper takes an interdisciplinary perspective to focus on the role played by the rural-urban dual system in China's urbanization and migration. We explain its establishment in China in the 1950s and its genealogy in the industrialization strategy adopted in the USSR in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In the reform era, the system has been refashioned to suit a new set of demands of the state industrialization strategy to cater for the global economy. We analyze the mechanisms of the dual system, and how it has helped generate low-cost migrant labor for urban employers and siphon off revenues for urban governments by expropriating rural land. We also argue that there are fundamental differences between the dual system and the common "dualism," based on the Lewis dual-sector model, as observed in many developing countries. The plight of children of migrants is used to illustrate the main points made in the paper. Our research challenges the prevailing perspectives in Chinese geography and urban studies, many of which are based on market-driven neoclassical economics or global neoliberalism, often ignoring China's historical and institutional contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children - including those of migrants - are China's future. Children of migrants now make up close to 40% of all children in China. This paper analyzes the recent trends from 2000 to 2016 and the major aspects of the children of migrants by distilling data from multiple large national surveys and assessing the very small rural left-behind children (LBC) population figures published by the Ministry of Civil Affairs in 2016. The paper also develops a method to estimate the LBC population generated by migrants in each provincial destination between 2010 and 2015, linking up different but related populations (adult migrants, migrant children, and LBC) in the origins and destinations. This broader "origin-destination" framework allows us to pinpoint clearly a major driver of LBC and hence to identify provinces needing the most attention in national and provincial efforts to alleviate the problem of LBC. Abbreviations: MC: Migrant Children; LBC: Left-Behind Children; MPR: Migration Participation Rate: LBCG: Left-Behind Children Generated [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including migrant labor in China, neighborhood relations, and segregation.