The Scheme of Migrant Social Classes and the Disparities in Contemporary China Society

  • Aaron Hsu

Student thesis: Unknown

Abstract

Since the Chinese government set up the household registration system (hukou in Chinese) in 1958, Chinese society has been institutionally divided into urban and rural sectors, described as between heaven and earth by some scholars. Such a rural-urban dual structure started to change and evolve into a social structure much more complex and stratified with China economic development over the past decades. With China economic opening launched in the late 1970s, the emergence of township and village enterprises in the 1980s, the creation of special economic zones in the 1990s, and the acceleration of urbanisation in the 2000s, there have been millions of rural population moving from the rural to the urban areas in the purpose of better life chances for themselves, their family, and their descendants. This rural-to-urban mobility driven by better life chances in cities is still ongoing and has reshaped the social structure and generated new social groupings. This study develops a new research scheme that differentiates six social groupings structured by hukou types, migration statuses, and occupational conditions. From a rural-to-urban perspective, these six social groupings are outright peasants, local migrant workers, return migrant workers, outgoing migrant workers, new urbanites, and outright urbanites. These migration-related social classes provide a comprehensive understanding of the social structure transitioned over the past decades in contemporary Chinese society. The present thesis uses the China Labour Dynamics Surveys to study the disparities in contemporary China as guided by the rural-urban class scheme developed in this study. The socioeconomic inequalities embedded in these social groupings are thoroughly investigated in the educational, economic, and psychological domains, and the analysis shows pronounced socioeconomic inequalities among the Chinese people. Compared to the urbanites, the rural groups are constantly disadvantaged in educational and economic opportunities and outcomes and psychologically in self-concepts relative to the urbanites. The accumulation of human capital (education, training, and qualifications) could play an important role for rural groups in improving their disadvantaged life chances. However, they still need to endure rural penalties in return for their human capital accumulation compared to the urbanites. More policies and practices that can generate more affirmative effects for the rural groups are needed to be introduced to shorten the disparities across contemporary China society.
Date of Award1 Aug 2023
Original languageEnglish
Awarding Institution
  • The University of Manchester
SupervisorYaojun Li (Supervisor), Tarani Chandola (Supervisor) & Nan Zhang (Supervisor)

Keywords

  • social security entitlement
  • social protection
  • medical insurance
  • pensions
  • Danwei
  • maternity insurance
  • unemployment insurance
  • housing fund
  • monetary returns
  • labour market
  • injury insurance
  • training programme
  • foreign enterprise
  • public sector
  • qualification
  • certification
  • economic opportunities
  • experimental development
  • China model
  • absolute income
  • relative income
  • work unit
  • prime work unit
  • nonmonetary returns
  • state-owned enterprise
  • social comparison
  • relative deprivation
  • optimistic
  • positive selection
  • negative selection
  • unequal returns
  • self-reported social status
  • heterogeneous returns
  • economic returns
  • China Labour-force Dynamics Survey
  • key-point high school
  • human capital accumulation
  • psychological states
  • self-reported quality of life
  • the self in retrospection
  • subjective well-being
  • self-concept
  • subjective social mobility
  • collective selves
  • the self in prospection
  • reference group
  • homogeneous others
  • differential mode of association
  • temporal comparison
  • self-improvement
  • homophily
  • three-year junior college
  • rural penalties
  • four-year university
  • rural-urban
  • outright peasants
  • local migrant workers
  • township and village enterprises
  • outgoing migrant workers
  • special economic zones
  • return migrant workers
  • returnees
  • stayers
  • rationing
  • household rationing
  • urbanisation
  • industrialisation
  • migrant workers
  • China
  • contemporary China society
  • social structure
  • new urbanites
  • social stratification
  • hukou
  • household registration system
  • economy opening
  • planning economy
  • rural migrants
  • hukou converters
  • migrant social classes
  • premiums
  • maximally Maintained Inequality
  • effectively maintained inequality
  • years of schooling
  • penalties
  • educational attainment
  • educational quality
  • better-tiered educational track
  • college degree
  • newcomers
  • educational continuation
  • four-year college
  • vocational education and training
  • new-type urbanisation
  • life chances
  • educational opportunities
  • educational expansion
  • institutional segregation
  • social justice
  • unequal education
  • educational system stratification
  • rural-to-urban mobility
  • social inequalities
  • social disparities

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