Why is the citizenisation of migrant workers just as important as rural development?
Over the 30-plus years of reform and opening up, rapid economic development has fundamentally shattered the stereotyped impressions of “rural people”. In recent years, both rural and urban areas have been seeking new transformations. In the view of Lu Huilin, associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Peking University, the accumulation and eruption of the “not-us” sentiment among rural groups poses a huge challenge to social development.
“Rural people have no class” - behind this lies an institutional problem
China Youth Daily: Nowadays, urban-rural interaction is more frequent, yet misunderstandings and barriers between urban and rural areas do not seem to have diminished. Why is that?
Lu Huilin: Reform and opening up has indeed loosened the urban-rural barriers, but urban people's stereotyped impressions of rural people have not been fundamentally changed. First, although opportunities for and frequency of interaction have increased, urban and rural people lack substantive interaction. In our daily lives we may accept services from migrant workers, but these are very superficial interactions that cannot promote mutual understanding. However, I think this is relatively easy to change.
The fundamental reason is actually the urban-rural dual-segmentation system. Under the existing household registration system, rural people can go to the cities to work, but they cannot become urban people, because the existing system does not allow them to settle and live in the city permanently. In our impressions, migrant workers entering the cities are always carrying their bedrolls and bundles onto buses and subways. Faced with this scene, urban people may look at them in a peculiar way, thinking that rural people have no class. But what is the reason behind it? It is not a question of rural people's class, but an institutional problem: the system does not allow them to settle where they work, so these people cannot have an urban lifestyle.
China Youth Daily: “Rural people must adapt to the urban lifestyle” - does this mean urban people dominate the discourse system?
Lu Huilin: The cultural gap between urban and rural areas has further widened in recent years, to the point that rural areas have gradually lost their place in the cultural system. Looking at today's television programmes and mainstream magazines, rural subject matter either does not appear at all or becomes an object of mockery, losing its own value. Under this influence, rural people also gradually cannot discover their own value, lose their subjectivity, and take the pursuit of urban values and urban lifestyles as their life goal. As urban-rural differentiation intensifies, the marginalisation of rural areas in cultural value becomes ever more obvious. The loss of rural people's discursive power is related to the trend of change in Chinese society as a whole.
Only a stable, high-quality labour force can guarantee that our country moves towards an era of creation
China Youth Daily: What consequences will rural people's loss of subjectivity bring?
Lu Huilin: Farmers and migrant workers are already a vulnerable group. If they are also excluded and looked down upon, their subjectivity will be further lost. Today many rural people's goal is to become “not-us”. They educate their children saying: “If you don't study hard, you'll end up like me.” This is a clear sentiment of “self-negation”.
On the one hand, this sentiment slowly accumulates and gathers; on the other hand, their aspirations cannot truly be realised in reality. The interaction of the two may produce enormous tension. Some migrant populations feel exclusion over the long term, but it does not usually erupt. However, once an unexpected incident occurs, this sentiment may gather and erupt, which is a huge challenge to the building of a harmonious society.
China Youth Daily: How can the urban-rural barrier and its social tension be resolved?
Lu Huilin: First, the government must change its purely city-centred development outlook and tilt fiscal investment towards rural areas. A beautiful countryside should be built on the improvement of rural living standards. A substantive improvement in living standards can gradually make rural areas a homeland where rural people are willing to stay, rather than a forsaken place from which they flee.
Second, for rural people who have already entered the cities to work and hope to become urban citizens, the state must take measures to enable them to live and work in peace and contentment. Whether in housing, healthcare or education, they should be given equal treatment as urban citizens. China is currently in a development model of being the world's factory, and for a long time it cannot change its unfavourable position in the global industrial chain, but even so, there is still some room to improve the situation of workers. This depends on the strength of Chinese labour and the government's determination to protect labour rights and interests.
Under realistic conditions, we must seriously handle the issue of migrant workers and give it urgent necessity. If a stable, high-quality labour force cannot be formed, it will also be impossible for China to achieve industrial upgrading, move beyond being the world's factory, and move towards Chinese creation. Therefore I believe that the citizenisation of migrant workers is just as important as rural development.