Institutionalized Discrimination of Chinese Migrant Workers: Where Are We in 2019?

Forty years after economic reforms were launched by Deng Xiaoping, in December 1978, China has established itself as a leading international power. Internal migration from the countryside to urban areas, one of the main drivers of China's economic emergence, often remains an overlooked side of the story. China's integration into the global economy has had a direct impact on internal migration. In the 1980s, coastal cities started to receive foreign investments and needed a cheap workforce to operate factories. In the meantime, productivity gains in agriculture relieved part of the rural population from agricultural tasks. The foundations of a massive migratory movement were laid.

The flow of migrant workers (nong mingong) leaving the countryside to fuel the needs of the booming private sector has intensified regularly since then. They usually fill the low-paid jobs that are disdained by city-dwellers, but which are essential to sustain economic growth. They operate mainly in the manufacturing industry, the construction sector, household services and delivery and logistics.¹ According to the official statistics, migrant workers account for more than a third of the country's workforce (287 million nong mingong in 2017). However, some of the individuals classified as migrant workers actually are born in the cities and belong to the "second generation" of migrant workers born after 1980. To understand the situation of migrant workers in China, it is therefore necessary to clarify the role of the hukou system, an institution created to control internal migration.

The planned economy system was founded on the distinction between countryside and urban areas: the role of rural workers was to ensure the provision of resources necessary to industrial development. The household registration system (hukou) was established in 1958 by the Communist leadership to prevent rural to urban migration and played a crucial role in allocating resources. However, the hukou was not abolished when the State control over migration was loosened in the late 1970s. On the contrary, it became a crucial institution to provide cheap labor to the cities. Individuals registered with an agricultural hukou are allowed to work in urban areas. However, they must obtain a temporary residence permit which does not provide the same social and civil rights as those of city-dwellers. For example, their children do not have access to free education in public schools. They also must go back to the localities in which they are registered to have access to public health. Migrant workers, therefore, are considered as "second-class citizens" in their own country.² This system is also maintained to please local authorities, afraid of over-exploitation of public goods.

The hukou facilitates exploitation by employers. Migrant workers endure infamous working conditions when building gigantic business districts in modern urban areas. The situation is not better for those engaged in "just-in-time" (as needed) international production. They are required to be flexible and, in some cases, may work 80 hours per week, while the legal regulations stipulate 48 hours, including overtime. Migrant workers may face the risk of unpaid wages and other kinds of pressure by employers who take advantage of their ambiguous status. They also must cope with high rates of work accidents. For those living in dormitories provided by employers, as is often the case for large suppliers of multinational brands in electronics or the shoe industry, lack of privacy and hygiene are another issue. In quickly expanding sectors such as delivery, traffic accidents are a growing concern.

Migrant Workers in the First Decade of the Twenty-First Century

Significant changes have occurred in the structure of the migrant population over the past decade. The government policies, aimed at developing western and central provinces, have made the coastal provinces relatively less attractive to migrant workers. The proportion of long-distance migration, therefore, has started to decline as workers can look for jobs closer to home. While migrant workers were mostly youngsters in the 1980s, fewer have entered the labor market in the last decade. Forty-eight percent of them are now in their forties or above. Construction and manufacturing industries, which used to attract most of the migrant workers, now employ 49 percent of them. Household services, sales, transport and logistics rely extensively on this cheap workforce.

The situation of "left-behind children" (liushou ertong) is another alarming issue for the future of Chinese society. Migrant workers often have no choice but to leave their children with their grandparents in the countryside, as they face higher living expenditures in the cities. According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), there were 61 million liushou ertong in 2010. In some inland provinces, they represent more than half of rural children and some villages are almost only inhabited by children and their grandparents.³ These children are potentially subject to anxiety, loneliness and depression, which may lead to long-term psychological and social damage. They are also much more exposed to prostitution networks and risks of sexual aggression. The situation is not necessarily better for those who follow their parents to the cities: they do not have access to public schools and health services, while their parents endure long working hours.

Besides the hukou, at least two other factors contribute to exploitation of migrant workers. First, local governments and capitalists have a common interest in not implementing national labor laws. Authorities commonly turn a blind eye to violations of labor regulations in order to attract investments and protect their fiscal revenue. More importantly, Chinese workers are deprived of fundamental collective rights.⁴ Migrant workers therefore have little capacity to demand implementation of existing labor laws and to request new rights. The absence of collective rights contributes to the gap between existing regulations and concrete working and living conditions experienced by migrant workers.

However, migrant workers are not passively resigned to their fate. On the contrary, they have become much more assertive over the past decade. Strikes are constantly on the rise and are now spreading massively to inland provinces. They also are better organized as workers have gained more experience in collective action. Therefore, the empowerment among workers increasingly challenges repression by local authorities and lack of assistance from official trade unions. The absence of an organization representing workers has indirectly fostered the development of small structures usually created by former migrant workers who gained experience in legal action against employers. These organizations, sometimes labelled as "labor NGOs," are usually barred from official registration. Some of them, at their own risk, may assist workers in organizing collective actions. However, the increased crackdown on labor activists since 2015 has made this option less likely.⁵

Confronted with economic and social challenges, Chinese authorities now agree to some concessions to migrant workers. Since the 2008-2009 crisis threatened the growth regime, one of the government's main priorities is to foster domestic consumption. To reach this goal, important regulations were passed to increase minimum wages and develop social protection. This strategy is not only based on purely economic objectives; obsessed with maintaining social stability, the Communist Party cannot completely ignore rising social inequalities. Therefore, moves towards the abolition of institutional distinctions between rural and urban populations recently were initiated, especially in small- and medium-sized cities. However, big cities that are the most attractive to migrant workers still resist the dynamics of unification and manage to circumvent national guidelines. For example, cities like Guangzhou and Shanghai established a highly competitive points system based on education, income level or the ability to afford a flat. With such criteria, it remains impossible for most migrant workers to get a local hukou. Besides, the migrant population is still subject to potentially violent crackdowns. For instance, after a fire killed 19 people on the outskirts of Beijing in November 2017, the city government launched a campaign of eviction of thousands of migrant workers.⁶

Eventually, the end of institutionalized discrimination towards migrant workers will require much more than the abolition of the hukou. During the last decade, the development of labor laws and the steady rise in minimum wages were significant measures in favor of migrant workers. The regulations on social protection represent another important step towards the integration of migrant workers.⁷ However, resistance by local officials impedes the implementation of this policy. The development of a substantial social protection system, able to effectively tackle social inequalities, would require a much more significant financial effort from the Chinese authorities.⁸ More importantly, effective integration of migrant workers in Chinese society requires regarding them as actors of change. The first step in that direction would be to recognize their right to genuine collective bargaining. The absence of such a mechanism prevents them from demanding implementation of the rights to which they are formally entitled. It also impedes the transition towards a more equitable society and the development of a domestic market that would contribute to rebalancing the growth regime. Contrary to the vision of some Chinese officials, the lack of migrant workers' collective rights is a crucial factor in social instability.