The era of family migration has arrived. How should we respond?

The arrival of the "era of family migration" shows that our country's urbanization process has entered a deeper stage. It can be foreseen that for a long time to come, the scale of family migrant populations will continue to increase. In response to such a large number of rural families pouring into cities, sufficient attention should be given both in top-level design and in urban management.

Behind a piece of data, the arrival of an era may be revealed. Recently, the National Health and Family Planning Commission released the "Report on China's Migrant Population Development 2016." The report shows that during the "12th Five-Year Plan" period, the proportion of migrant workers who moved out with their entire families among all migrant workers continued to rise rapidly. Dynamic monitoring data from the National Health and Family Planning Commission show that nearly 90% of married new-generation migrants migrate as couples together, about 60% migrate together with spouses and children, and more and more migrant families are beginning to migrate with elderly people. This shows that China's population migration has entered a stage mainly characterized by family-based migration.

The trend of family-based migration among rural migrants can generally be explained by two factors. First, urbanization and industrialization continue to strengthen their appeal to farmers. Higher incomes and richer lives in cities are key factors attracting people to leave the countryside. The current phenomenon of "moving together with the whole family" occurs not only because farmers who leave home are beginning to pay attention to quality of life, but more importantly because these migrants no longer treat the countryside as a fallback in the way the first generation of migrant workers did, and are more likely to entrust their future to the city. On the other hand, family migration is also a choice made out of necessity. Rural laborers leaving home has created large numbers of left-behind children and left-behind elderly people, and the various social problems arising from this keep emerging. In some villages, with the continuous outflow of population, they have already become "hollowed out," and the space for leaving family members, especially children, in the hometown to develop is quite limited. Therefore, even if living conditions in the city are limited, keeping family members by their side is still the best choice for many farmers who leave home.

Family-based migration has many practical positive meanings. Compared with the enormous impact that labor outmigration has brought to rural social structure in recent years, the increase in the degree of family-based migration among migrants is conducive to preserving the relative integrity of rural families, directly reducing the long-term separation within migrant families, thereby reducing left-behind children and left-behind elderly people, making up for the lack of family affection, and having a positive impact on the construction of social governance as a whole.

However, the reason it is called "family migration" rather than "whole-family settlement" fundamentally lies in the fact that most of these families have not truly integrated into the city. Although the whole family, old and young, lives in the city and works in the secondary and tertiary industries, they have not yet put down roots, and therefore remain in an unstable state of mobility.

So when we walk through the streets and alleys of cities, we often see scenes like this: a family of three from the countryside jointly runs a small shop, the adults are busy with business, and the child plays on the street rather than receiving formal education in a kindergarten; we also often notice that in a certain city's distribution market, children from rural areas of varying ages gather together, forming new "mini urban village" clusters; or in those seemingly disorderly, low and cluttered buildings beside high-rise towers, migrant workers engaged in heavy manual labor bring out a basin of food and sit with their families at a small table set up on the street to eat... Although they struggle in the city as a family and expend toil and sweat for the city's development, in essence they still live a life no different from that in the countryside, let alone enjoy the city's high-quality medical services or bear the expensive rent.

Population migration with the family as a unit differs from a single farmer going to the city to work. Because the family members are relatively complete, migrant families have more and more complex social demands. In particular, the children and elderly people who follow young and middle-aged laborers into the city have an even greater need for safeguards in education, elderly care, medical care, housing, and other aspects.

The first issue facing migrant families is children's education. Most farmers who migrate with their whole families bring children with them. According to the "Report on Data of Migrant Children in China - 2014," as of November 2010, the number of migrant children in China had reached 35.81 million. Such a huge number of migrant children grow up in cities, yet it is very difficult for them to obtain fair educational opportunities in cities. This has become a major constraint on farmers putting down roots in cities.

Second, medical security urgently needs to be improved. In farmer families that migrate to cities with the whole family, because the proportion of elderly people and children increases, the desire to enjoy basic medical security becomes more urgent. However, according to the "2014 National Migrant Workers Monitoring Survey Report," the proportion of migrant workers participating in urban employee pension insurance and medical insurance is itself very low, only about 20%. As for the elderly people who follow their working children to the city, most of them have only participated in low-level rural social pension insurance and the New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme. Not only is the level of protection insufficient, but transfer, continuation, and enjoyment of benefits are also very inconvenient.

Third, housing is also a major obstacle restricting farmers who migrate with their whole families from putting down roots in the city. A 2006 survey on "Beijing's 1 per mille migrant population survey" by the Population and Development Research Center of Renmin University of China showed that 80% of migrants lived in urban villages or village-edge areas, and among them 80% had housing area below 20 sq m. In recent years, the housing situation of migrant workers has not changed significantly. With the increase in the proportion of whole-family migration, it is extremely common for a whole family, three generations of grandparents and grandchildren, to be crowded into a simple rented room. Faced with the more complex problems of migrant families such as children's education and medical care, these urban villages and village-edge areas scattered throughout the city are clearly unable to bear the burden.

In addition, farmers who migrate to cities with their whole families and their families also need recognition and acceptance from urban society. If they can live in the city with dignity, they will develop a sense of belonging to the city, hold hope for life and expectations for the future, develop identity recognition, and ultimately put down roots in the city.

Mobility is where social vitality lies. And the process of urbanization is originally "the process of people continuously migrating from villages to towns, and from towns to cities." The arrival of the "era of family migration" shows that China's urbanization process has entered a deeper stage. It can be foreseen that for a long time to come, the scale of family migrant populations will continue to increase. Such a large number of rural families pouring into cities is also a huge challenge to urban management and service capacity. Therefore, it is necessary to adapt to this change and prepare early, scientifically adjust planning according to development trends, and continuously improve the basic public services and social security capacity for migrant families.

At the national level, in the face of the trend of large-scale family migration, the degree of attention should also be increased, the common problems existing among them should be carefully considered, and more refined and targeted policy measures should be formulated, so as to provide support from the top-level design for farmer families to smoothly achieve "urbanization."