Abstract
Based on interviews with rural–urban migrants in Anhui and Sichuan provinces of China, this chapter focuses on the coping strategies adopted by Chinese rural–urban migrant families to deal with the tensions caused by changes in generational care chains. By illustrating how and why the traditional family support system managed to survive and function after women’s emigration, a new pattern of generational contract was identified in response to the lack of support from the formal social security system. The dependent children and the elderly were left in the countryside by the migrating mothers. The able grandparents took care of the grandchildren while the young migrating couples reciprocated by giving their parents financial support, other material help and promises of better support in the future. The chapter demonstrates that this new pattern of informal intergenerational support renewed the capability of family support. It is not a simple replica of the old fashioned preindustrial welfare nexus; at a more general level, the new generational contract can be seen as a model of interaction between tradition and modernity.
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Notes
- 1.
Here the term “rural–urban migrant” refers those who were migrated from their home villages more than one month during the year 2003. The number of the migrants was 90 million in 2001 (NBOS, 2004).
- 2.
Province Profile (as of 2001):
Sichuan province is located in the southwest of China; population of 86 million; it has the fourth largest population of the 31 provincial regions in China; 9,000 ha. cultivated land which accounts for approximately 7% of total national area; 5,250 Yuan/person (about 530 Euro/person) per capital GDP—the highest is 37,400 Yuan/person (about 3,740€/person) in Shanghai and the lowest is 4,200 Yuan/person (about 420€/person) in Gansu province; composition of gross domestic product: primary industry 22%, secondary industry 40%, tertiary industry 38% (national average of composition of gross domestic product: primary industry 15%, secondary industry 51%, tertiary industry 34%).
Anhui province: located in the south-east of China; population of 63 million; it has the eighth largest population of the 31 provincial regions in China; 6,000 ha. of cultivated land, which account for about 5% of total national area; 5,200 Yuan/person (520€/person) per capital GDP; composition of gross domestic product: primary industry 23%, secondary industry 43%, tertiary industry 34%.
Source: NBS (National Bureau of Statistics of China) (2002).
- 3.
The author of the paper, as a member of the research team, was responsible for the study of the female workers of the project, and with other members of the research team conducted interviews in Anhui province. Preliminary results were published in China in 2001 and 2002, in Finland in 2005.
- 4.
According to Stanley Lieberson (1992, 115), the choice of cases for study is itself critical and requires great thought about the appropriate procedure for choosing them. A case study approach was applied in an attempt to follow Lieberson’s advice. In order to guarantee the representativeness of the data, the scheme of case selection designed by the project team abides by the following rules (He & Bai, 2002): (1)Cases apportionment: first we selected two representative counties separately from Anhui and Sichuan province, and then we selected three representative villages in each given county.
(2)The criteria of selection for case counties: one requirement was that the number of out-migrant workers accounted for at least 20% of county’s total labor force in 1998. There should be a long history of out-migration records compared with other counties and the county should be a typical agricultural county (indicated by gross value of agricultural output) and at the median or average level in terms of economic development (indicated by per capita disposable income) and natural resources (situation about farm land, irrigation, etc.) within the province.
(3)The criteria of selection for case villages: the proportion of out-migrant workers in a village should exceed the average proportion in the given county. The village should also display a relatively long out-migration record. The three villages selected represent different stages of economic development measured as per capita disposable income, and the villages are poor, rich, and middle-income localities. There were 12 sample villages in total.
(4)Within the village, individual interviewees were selected on the basis of a quota sampling procedure according to their migration experiences. Twenty-five interviewees in each village including at least 15 with returnees were conducted. Among the interviewees there were five female returnees. In addition there were five who had never migrated and five relatives to those who were current migrants were interviewed. There were at least seven female respondents in total in each village. In principle, the interviewees belonged to the “labor force,” i.e., the villagers were between 16 and 60 years of age for male, and 16 and 55 years of age for female.
- 5.
The primary purpose of the system was to control rural residents’ move to cities. For city people there were no formal barriers to move to countryside.
- 6.
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Acknowledgments
This chapter draws on my PhD thesis on the situation of migrant rural women in China. Support for my study was provided by a grant for a research position in the Department of Social Policy at the University of Turku, Finland from July 2000 to December 2005. The thesis is a subproject in the research program “Challenges of Modernization and Globalization for Chinese Social Policy” financed by the Academy of Finland. I am exceedingly grateful to my financiers. A debt of gratitude is owed to numerous people in Finland, in particular I would like to name Professor Olli Kangas, the leader of the research project, Ismo Söderling, Director at Population Research Institute for helpful comments and/or encouragement on earlier drafts of the thesis. I have greatly benefited from the teamwork in the research group which conducted the fieldwork in China that forms the empirical basis of this chapter. In addition, I would like to thank Shahra Razavi and anonymous reviewer for valuable comments and suggestions regarding an earlier version of this chapter.
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Luo, G. (2012). China’s Family Support System: Impact of Rural–Urban Female Labor Migration. In: Chen, S., Powell, J. (eds) Aging in China. International Perspectives on Aging, vol 2. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8351-0_7
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