2015 - DARDAINE Renaud - Children of migrants, the urban left behind by China Studio

CHILDREN OF MIGRANTS, THE URBAN LEF T BEHIND

移民者的孩子，被忽视的人 The life of migrant children

Renaud Dardaine Product Designer / China Studio 13-15

‘‘ WHAT WE LEARN IN CHILDHOOD IS BET T ER T HAN EN GRA VED IN STONE. ’’ Chinese proverb

A BS T RA C T

meetings in numerous associations, such as Stepping Stones Shanghai. Thanks to these experiences, I have been able to be close to the people I wanted to work for.

The aim of this dissertation is to combine my researches and my observations and watch through the study of the migrantsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lives how a social situation can make a radical change on a child. I focused my researches on the city of Shanghai which is one of the Chinese cities who welcomes the largest amount of migrants. All the researches I made made me more comfortable with the situation of the migrant populations and allowed me to understand better the needs of these people, in order to develop a relevant design project.

The results of the study reveal that migrations are a part of the Chinese culture. Today more than never, China is the theatre of a massive movement of people, and migrations are became a major stake for China. You will discover through this dissertation that migrations are since a couple of decades the symbol of numerous disparities and other problematics. These social issues and the question of the disparities have been underlined by the situation of migrants, coming in the main Chinese cities from their countryside with the hope to found a better quality of life. Among this population of migrants, nearly 100 million children grow up in the apprehension of an unstable future.

With the desire to get as much information as possible, I carried broad researches such as readings, observations on the fields and exchanges with people such as passers-by but also experts. To be personally involved in my researches, I also participated to some books donations in schools for children of migrants, as well as to

T A BL E O F C O N T E N T S

Introduction 1# The migration in China 1.1 Terms and common words 1.2 Migration in China : an historical phenomenon 1.3 Relations between the migrations and the history of China 1.4 Migration in China, a controlled phenomenon 1.5 Who are the migrants? 1.6 Among this population, different actors 1.7 Relation in the society and discriminations 2# The Children Left-Behind 2.1 Context 2.2 Who are they? 2.3 Separated children 2.4 A vulnerable populations of children 2.5 The Left-behind children syndrome 2.6 No way to escape 3# Children of Migrants in Urban China 3.1 Situation 3.2 Healthcare 3.3 Education 3.4 Social, geographical and cultural marginalization 3.5 Stepping Stones Conclusion Girl in a school of migrants

Opening

The Library Project - Donation of books and furnitures Shanghai / 2014 / Personal picture

Bibliography / Filmography / Webography / Appendices

F O RE W O RD

This dissertation is based on all the researches and observations I have made during my one year and a half in Shanghai, and since I am working around the situation of children of migrants, from april 2014 to february 2015.

This thesis has been written as a part of my End Studies Project. This final studies project is the result of my two last year of master’s degree at l’Ecole de Design Nantes Atlantique. I have always been interested and curious about people behaviours, and since I’m am abroad, living in China, my passion for culture discovery has increased. It was one of my departure arguments : be plunged in a new way of living. Today, as a product designer, my work is fundamentally oriented toward people. Be focused on people habits is became one of my aims.

The knowledges I learned come from my daily wanderings and my observations on the field, but also from interviews and people contact. My subject, as a reflect of my studies in China, is fundamentally focus on people.

I N T RO DUC T I O N

INTRODUCT I ON

I had the opportunity, for almost two years, to increase my experience and my learnings of the design, but also of the life, through a cross-cultural program in China. One reason of my mobility in China was the will to change and to discover a new culture. As a Product Designer, I like to think that one of my missions is to improve the life of people, through the innovation but also through emotion. I discovered the story of the Chinese migrants, and I understood that the challenge, in term of anthropology and of inter-culturality, could be constructive for me.

in the Shanghai environment, but always hidden or left behind. I was interested to know more about this forgotten population. That is why I decided to make all these researches. I wanted to work on and for the Chinese migrants. China has a very long history and China has changed dramatically over times. According to a lot of changes, in the urban landscape for example, but also in the mentalities, the China of today is very different from the China of thirty years ago. I have in my head this picture of Pudong, the Shanghai’s amazing building area, twenty years ago, compared to Pudong today. What a good photo to understand all these changes.

During my first year in China, I learned about the migrant workers living in the Chinese cities. Throughout my daily life, I had the feeling to be permanently confronted with a population which I didn’t knew. This population was the migrants. I had the impression to shared their lives by some basic interactions. It was for a brief moment, but we shared something. We had this contact, we were living in the same street, in the same area, in the same city; but I didn’t know anything about them.

But, even if we can noticed all these changes, there are also recurrent themes throughout China’s history. Theses themes are generally linked to China’s huge land and population, and the efforts of the successive governments to keep the land and the people united. One of these recurrent themes is the migration.

I saw the waitress at the dumpling restaurant where I often ate this amazing Chinese dish. I saw also this young security guard at the entrance of my building, and many other outsiders every day, everywhere. I noticed at this point that the migrant population was omni-present

Artistic and poetic vision of modern China Shanghai-based artist Yang Yongliang

Nowadays, when you walk in the streets of a Chinese city, a city as Shanghai or Beijing, you will hear not only the many languages of expatriates came in Shanghai to discover a new culture and work - what is moreover a kind of migration and an interesting inter-cultural approach - but a mix of different dialects among Chinese people. A lot of time, I experimented this language plurality, when by trying to speak Chinese, my Shanghainese way to speak (maybe also because of my foreigner accent), was not understood. That is in part due to the fact in these moderns cities, residents come from all parts of the country and have an incredible variety of backgrounds. By the way, that is a very good proof of multi-culturality.

me, this example shows that the question of the migration and of the identity is really present for Chinese. The internal migration has dramatically changed the landscape of every Chinese city in the past 30 years. In her book, Diana Lary2 said, thanks to the National Bureau of Statistics3, that at the end of 2011, China’s internal migrant population was estimated to a total of 250 million. 250 million. This is approximately 19 per cent of China’s population, more than 3% of the world population, and more than 4 times France’s population. Those 250 million of people represent also 70 per cent of China’s urban labor force, and one-third of it’s total labor force. In this situation, a first observation came to me : China can’t live without migrants.

These internal migrants are indispensable for the Chinese cities. Basically, in these big cities of Shanghai or Beijing, it’s more easy to meet a migrant than a local. We can call them : Wài di rén, 外的人 (outsider), meaning that they come from an other region. One day, I asked to one of my colleagues, Li Lun1, a 25 years old “Shanghainese” : “Where do you come from? He said : from Shanghai, I’m Shanghainese. I replied : but, and your grandparents? He said : Oh, they came from an other area”. For

2. Diana Lairy, author of Chinese Migrations: The Movement of People, Goods, and Ideas Over Four Millennia, published

by Rowman & Littlefield

Publishers, in 2012. 3. NBS, the National Bureau of Statistics of China, an

1. Interview with Li Lun, Product Designer at Yaang

agency directly placed under the State Council. The

Life, the company I worked for my 4th year internship,

National Bureau of Statistics is in charge of statistics

17/06/2014.

and economic accounts.

Shanghai timecapture.com

It’s not a surprise, but due to their location, the coastal provinces and the provincial cities of China, as Shanghai, Beijing or even Guangdong, are the places where there is the highest percentages of migrants4. These three cities are the top three destinations since many years, and the proportion of the migrants is still increasing. In 2000, migrants represented 26.6, 19.2 and 24.7 per cent of the population of these three areas (Shanghai, Beijing, Guangdong)5. In 2010, the figures has risen to 39, 35.9 and 30 per cent. In only 10 years, the demographics of the three places have been greatly transformed, from about 1/5 residents being a migrant without a nonlocal Hùkǒu, to about 1/3.

for a real place, in a society which does not always recognise them. The first part of my dissertation is introducing the notion of migration. What is a migration in China? Who are the migrants? I want to present the keys to understand well my topic, which is directly linked to the movements of people through China. Indeed, through this exploration of what is a migration, I am going to present migrations into a particular context : China. Then, I will speak more precisely about my subject, by approaching the situation of the children of migrants. Finally, in the last part of my essay, I will be focused on the children left-behind situation, but only in urban areas.

I am going to explain, through my researches and my observation, how migrations and the migrant population are became a part of modern China. Migrants are one of the main China’s actors. By actor, I want to describe this labor force which allows China to be, today, the first world economic power. More than be useful for their country, I think migrants are looking

外的人

4. ChinaDaily.com.cn, about the Top 10 Most Popular China cities for Migrants, 30/05/2014.

Wài

Rén

foreing,

People,

external

person

5. Present and Future of the Chinese Labour Market, by Michele Bruni and Claudio Tabacchi, published in 2011. This essay aims to provide a representation, as rich and complete as possible, of the Chinese labour market.

#1 T HE M I GRA T I O N S I N C HI N A

#1 THE MIG RATI ON S I N CH I N A

To understand the migration phenomenon and then established the link between what I call the migration process and the daily life of the children of migrants, we need first to have precisions about what is a migration, and what means migration in China. Let’s start.

The datas7 concerning the total number of migrants vary, but are never less than a hundred and fifty million. According to the National Bureau of Statistics of China, they were more than 260 million at the end of 2012. The massive migration seems recent if we trust the events which take place in China for 20 years, but it can be interpreted as the long-delayed resumption of the labor migration and urbanisation that started at the end of the nineteenth century, and even before.

A migration is a change of an individuals’s living place. The first meaning coming to my mind for a migration is the movement of people. It is a phenomenon probably so old as the humanity, when our nomadic ancestors were travelling. But the migrations in China are a bit more complicated than just a movement of people. Indeed, in China, ten of millions of peasants and workers have left their countrysides over the last three decades, to find work and a better situation in the mains cities and in the special economic zones of China. This massive migration is the largest in all the human history. It’s a precipitous slide away from the rural areas, where until recently over 80% of China’s population lived6.

THE MASSIVE CHINESE M I G R AT I O N I S T H E LARGEST IN ALL THE HUMAN HISTORY

7. According to the National Bureau of Statistics of China, related in an article write by Sophie Song on 6. Social Change and the Urban-Rural divide in China, by

the International Business Times in 2013. http://www.

Martin King Whyte, 1999.

ibtimes.com.

Migrant workers with their packages Liu Jin / AFP / Getty Images

#1 THE MIG RAT I ON S I N CH I N A 1. Ter ms a nd com m on words

遷移 a definition, an universal and easily understandable definition, I would say this: Migration is the installation in a region of and individual, or a group of people, native from an other region. Normally, during a migration, people move in their own country and most of the time, the migration is motivated by the job search and the perspective of a better quality of life.

As a foreigner and non fluent in Chinese, the different translations and meaning around the Chinese characters were totally new for me. I believe today, in term of vocabulary, that the Chinese meanings around migration are very symbolic of the place occupied by the migrants in the Chinese culture. I have a taste for the words and that is maybe why all the meanings around the Chinese words seems to be interesting for me. I guess this taste is due to my Hight School literary diploma. Play and use the french words was always a passion for me, and I think that helped in my researches.

The immigration is a bit different. Immigration is also a voluntary travel (or not : refugees for example) of individuals or population, but, from a country to an other one. These kinds of movements are due to economic, political or cultural reasons.

Qian

Shift, alter, remove

入境 Rù

Jìng

enter

Territory, border

民工

The Chinese meanings around migrations reveals something strong. For the major part of the world, there is two main words. Migration, and immigration. The first term used to speak about human movements is Migration. If I had to take

Yí

move, change, shift

Mín

Gong

people

Work, labour, worker

Because I needed to be close to my subject, to be able to understand it as well as possible, one of my first reflex was to distinguish and use some Chinese vocabulary. In Chinese, the word migration can be translate by 遷移, Qianyí, which means move, migrate, or transfer. It’s different from emigration, which is 入境, Rùjìng, meaning entry in a country.

What is relevant if we start to compare these global terms with the Chinese ones, it is that in Chinese, the word for migration, Yídòng 移动, does not distinguish the movements within a state or beyond its borders. For me, this unique word reflects the cultural usage, that migration simply means : a movement away from home. The word Yídòng, for migration, is very broad. It covers more form of movements than the english word Migration.

In China, the migrant workers are called 農民工, the Nóngmín gōng. But they are generally called Míngōng. Míngōng is composed of Míng which means people, and Gōng which means workers. Basically, Míngōng can be translated by Migrant Workers.

The Chinese usage of Yídòng for any kind of movements is a proof that for people, a migration is not stronger if it is in a place abroad. The simple fact to move from his native hometown is something important. The action to leave his house behind himself can be synonym of fear and concern, but it can be also a source of excitement and discovery. It is all about strong emotions.

移动

Yídòng, 移动, means to move, to shift, to transfer.

Yí to move, to alter To shift, to change

Dòng To move, To act, to use

Workers building a wall Guangfu Lu, along Suzhou Creek, November 2014 Personal picture

#1 T HE M I GRA T I O N S I N C HI N A 2 . An H i sto r i c a l phe n o m e n o n

First of all, and it’s important for understand the motivation of these people, the migrants in China are experiencing a quest for a better life. They need to move for their survival. And even if Chinese people are used to move, it’s important to note that Chinese migrants have always shown two characteristics and features, through various historic facts.

To understand the migration phenomenon present in China nowadays, I decided to explore the Chinese past, the Chinese history. In first because I think it’s fundamental to have a look through the Chinese history, and then, because migration and China are linked since centuries.

Summer Palace, Beijing Personal picture, 2014

Indeed, one conclusion of all my researches is that China has a long history in term of migration. China is known to have an history that goes back for four millennia, into prehistory. The references to the rich Chinese past are still really present, even in the education of an European child such as I. During that great long period of history, through the centuries, through the historical moments and dynasties, there have been vast movements of people, moving within China of course, but also latterly, beyond its borders. Migrations patterns have closely mirrored Chinese history, and it’s interesting to noticed that migration is a part of the Chinese culture. Moreover, Diana Lairy, in her book called The movement of people, goods and ideas over four millennia said : “migration is a lens through which to look at the whole of Chinese history”. For me, this citation is showing the narrow links China has always knew with the movements of people.

One of these two characteristics is daring and stoicism. I learnt quickly after my arrival that it is common in the Chinese culture to accord a big importance for the face and to the pride, and I believe that this trait is very present with the Chinese migrants. Indeed, the migrants show, added to the determination and the firmness, a kind of impassiveness in front of the misfortune or of the disease.

In this concept of stoicism and daring, there is the belief in fate (Yuánfèn8, 缘分), the mysterious force that controls a person’s destiny. This kind of believes are omni-present in China and these terms allowed me to underline the courage of migrants, the willingness to suffer hardship, so long as they may eventually succeed. I think this is a dominant characteristic of Chinese migration, present since the beginning of population movements, and it continues to be so today. The other characteristic is an undying attachment to home. For Chinese people who moved, it’s important to return home, literally to breath, or, if they can’t, recreate a familiar context, reminding their hometown. To underline what I explain, I found the words of Du Fu9 written more

than a millennium ago and saying that : “the moon is brighter at home”.

IN CHINA, PEOPLE ARE U S E D T O M O V E V E R Y FA R AWA Y

These two characteristics are a proof that the migrations, thanks to the numerous years, have left a mark on the mentalities.

C hi n a to wn : the C hi n e se e m i g r a n ts a ro un d the wo r l d

移动 Yuánfèn fate

8. Yang & David, «The Role of Yuan in Chinese Social Life: A Conceptual and Empirical Analysis». Asian

The example of the Chinatown, present in a lot of different countries is for me one the most fantastic diaspora. I said before that when Chinese people are moving it’s important for them to re-create a context of home. This is exactly what those people do when they create these Chinese areas abroad. The Chinatown of Los Angeles, New York or San Francisco in USA, or the Chinatown of London and Paris in Europe are a good place to meet Chinese emigrants and to be plunged into the Chinese culture. The personal story about these people’s migration must be fascinating, I am sure.

I want to introduce the situation of the Chinese emigrants present all around the world. I admit, speak about such a movement, so close to us in time, is a little early in my thought. But I wanted from now on to show that Chinese were ready to travel very far. They are not the same migrants than those about whom I want to speak in this dissertation. They don’t have the same goal or the same origins. But it is a good example to underline the fact that the Chinese population have always moved around the world.

Contributions to Psychology, 1988, p.269, 281. 9. Du Fu, also known as Tu Fu, was a prominent Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty.

#1 THE MIG RATI ON S I N CH I N A 3 . A rel a t i on bet ween t h e mig r at ions and the his tor y of C hina

I choose some events and facts from the Chinese History, such as conflicts and cultural symbols to underline the presence of the migration through the centuries of Chinaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s existence. In order to insist about the diversity of the migration presence and to show this relation, I have selected different and varied elements.

new one, wars were also accompanied by the movement of population and goods. During these wars and battles, millions of people were displayed by fighting during dynastic change, forced to flee as refugees. The populations were used as fighters and forced to moved. The dynasties wars stood out the Chinese History, and power changes have often pushed people to travel and to establish themselves in new territories.

The war and the migration All these flows were migrations. Because of these warrior past, the migrations became a common phenomenon in the Chinese imagination.

Warfare has been one the major stimuli of migration in the Chinese history. Of course, wars are used to make people move. As a sad example, I can quote the deportation of the Jews during the Second World War, or the current movement of the populations who flee the fights in Syria. Through many examples and cases, we can say that wars has always make people move10.

of China, did not hesitate to send his own brother in far away places to maintain his authority and his power. By doing that, he moved whole clans and their families. A kind of forced migrations in a way.

Even if ecology has been a concern of rulers since the dawn of the Chinese culture, the rapid growth of China, the urbanisation and the industrialisation for example, have caused a lot of changes in the country. Urbanisation has often been the inevitable consequence of industrialisation and modernity, a natural process that is unstoppable.

That is why we can say that one of the longest running themes in Chinese migration is the punishment migration12. By punishment migration, I mean to send people who have offended the state into exile, make them move. Of course this is less population moved than in the actual Chinese migration process. But itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a kind of migration, and something strongly present in the Chinese culture.

As an example of the link between ecology and migrations, I choose the desertification in the border areas of north China. But there is a lot of other cases, like in the west of China13. Due to several human actions (urbanisation, river barrage..) this region has important ecology issues, and the eco-system is upset. In this case, people are moving because they are suffering a lack of water.

The punishment by exile

After this historical point of view, I want to show how the Chinese government had assimilated the migration, from its point of view. Regularly, China is known for his politic, and since centuries emperor and other chiefs have been used to keep away their rivals.

But, let us be concentrated on China. Indeed, especially in China, the main wars, like the dynasties wars for example, have created movements of people. If the different wars were almost always accompanied by the fall of a dynasty and the rise of a

aspect and the climate change are also a factor of migration. Indeed, ecological changes have created major pressures on migration.

For example, near the year 1300, the Kubilai Khan11, the Mongolian emperor

Ecology can influence migrations

China is a very big country, and as a such country, China has some ecological issues. I believe that a country is always writing its history. Currently, the history of China is going through its amazing economy. But this success have a price, and ecology is often sacrificed. The fact is, and it is a relevant part for me, the ecological 12. Diana Lairy, author of Chinese Migrations: The

13. Yan Tan & Fei Guo, Environmentally Induced

10. Why do people migrate?

11. http://www.herodote.net/, Kubilai Khan (1215-

Movement of People, Goods, and Ideas Over Four

Migration in West China, XXVI IUSSP International

http://www.embraceni.org/.

1294), le Mongol qui se fit empereur de Chine.

Millennia, page 8.

Population Conference, in 2007.

I profoundly believe that ecology is something that we’ll have to take under consideration, because all the issues linked to ecology will create new movements of people. That is actually a good proof that ecology and migration can be linked.

As I said before, being myself a literary person, the discovery of these proverbs was fascinating. Many of these proverbs are antique, and people say that Chengyu are the words of great thinkers and poets. They are known and used by the literate and the illiterate people, that is why it is interesting, because it is a good proof that those proverbs can be used by everyone. I believe that these kind of expression belongs to the Chinese culture. A lot of Chengyu are known by the Chinese population, but also in the rest of the world for their wisdom and their wealth.

The migration trough the literature

During that researches around the Chinese History and around the Chinese culture, I found an important and very relevant source of datas, something showing that the migrations are profoundly anchored in the Chinese culture.

I choose an example of Chengyu to analyse and understand how it works.

This is not a fact, this is not a date, this is the literature.

破釜沉舟, Pò fǔ chén zhōu

This kind of literature is called Chengyu14. In fact, Chengyu are phrases or proverbs, and are a much loved and valued part of the Chinese language. I discovered it by chance, when my Chinese friends quoted me some of these proverbs. I realised at this time that these proverbs was very present in China, sometimes used as a tool to express feelings or simply as an image.

破釜沉舟

Basically, Chengyu means : 成 : to form, and 语 : the language.

Pò fû chén zhou break cauldron, scuttle, boat

14. The Chengyu, http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_de_ chengyu, list of Chengyu.

#1 T HE M I GRA T I O N S I N C HI N A Most of the time, the Chengyu speaking about migration express homesickness and sadness and generally they criticise the migration and denigrate this experience.

Literally the following list of words mean : ‘‘ break / cauldron / scuttle / boat ’’. It is an historic anecdote and here is the story about this anecdote: a general had ordered his troops to destroy all the kitchen utensils and to scuttle boats, after have crossed the enemy river, to show his confidence in his army’s victory. Any possibility of retreat was become impossible for him and his warriors. They won the battle. This Chengyu translates into only four characters a story, but also the idea of a confidence absolved in the general’s victory.

All these examples allow me to say that migrations are became a part of the Chinese life, and that Chinese are used to live by being closely linked to the migrations, thanks, here, to the literature. The important past of China and all the various factors of migration make migrations a strongly and common phenomenon in the China’s culture.

Here are some of these proverbs, translated in english. -’’A thousand days at home are good; a day away from home is bad’’, Confucius

4 . M i g r a t i o n i n C hi n a , a co n t ro l l e d phe n o m e n o n

In China, the migrations seem to be controlled and organised. Indeed, due to the China’s economic development, the government try to manage the migrations.

At the same time, the cold war severed all connections with the West and a first issue appeared. China needed to manufacture products that previously might have been imported, like steel, vehicles, vessels or machinery.

The government controls migrations, sometimes just by keeping an eye on people, sometimes by using the migrations as a tool.

But, in order to produce all those goods, China needed workers. Who will be these new workers? Who will allow China to produce more? Migrants. That’s why workers were selected from all over China, to move to the new plants, and a first wave of migrant workers arrived. During a while, they were the heroes of labor, the vanguard of the proletariat, the symbol of a new China.

As a tool, because I believe that the government wanted to manage the migration for several reasons. The strongest one which appears to me is directly due to the Chinese economic development. Basically, China needed to be strong and well organised, to be more efficient. Control the moving population was fundamental.

With the wish to use migrants’s workforce, the government had already exercised a kind of control over the population of migrants, by make them move and by using them.

-’’The moon is brighter at home’’, Du Fu -’’A dragon’s bed is not as good as a dog’s nest’’, Vernacular -’’So attached to home that leaving is hard’’, Ban Gu, Han Shu -’’Turning one’s back on home and leaving its well’’, Ma Zhiyuan -’’Forced to leave home, now homeless’’, Bo Zhuyi

Influence the movement of people

This is during the year 1949 that the China’s isolation arrived, from the entire world, except the soviet bloc. With this isolation, the Chinese government understood that it will be essential to boost the Chinese industrial production15.

-’’Return home dressed in brocade’’, Sima Qian 15. Kam Wing Chan, The Household Registration

-’’Grow old and die without leaving home’’, Vernacular

System and Migrant Labor in China : Notes on a Debate, a population and development review, 2010.

The strongest control : the Hùkou, the Household Registration System

restricted within China, and it became almost impossible to leave China. In fact, each people has a Hùkǒu, and belongs to a region, to a province. Individuals became categorised by the state as either rural or urban, and they were required to stay and work within their designated geographic areas.

The biggest problems for a migrant today in China, are the juridic and administrative problems. At the base of these problems : the Hùkǒu. The Hùkǒu is a licence of residence place set up to stop the movements of populations. Originally, the securities of a person depended on his licence of place of residence. The Chinese government officially promulgated this family register system to control the movement of people between urban and rural areas. Individuals are broadly categorised as a «rural» or an «urban» worker. In brief, if you live in your province, you benefit from your rights. If you live far from your origin province, impossible to reach numerous rights.

The Hùkǒu is the strongest statement the State needs to control its people.

户口, Hùkǒu, means that each individual mouth (kǒu) has a designated residence in a specific household (Hù).

The Hùkou, an important issue for Children of Migrants

The Hùkǒu makes of the Chinese migration an unique phenomenon in the world. One of the better example, and it’s going well with my topic, is the children’s situation. If the Hùkǒu is a burden17 for migrants, it is the same for their children. Almost in all the international contexts, the children of migrants who are born in their migration destinations are not really considered as migrants. In France for example, if you are migrant and if your child is born in France, he is french.

China introduced in 1958 this mechanism of migration control called Hùkǒu16, a system which is an instrument in the government’s toolbox to regulate internal migrations. Basically, the Hùkǒu is a system of interior passport. This new system is a combination of the traditional confucian system predilection for population stability and the soviet system of movement restriction. When the Hùkǒu has been created, free movements were 16. Ping Zhou, China’s Hukou System, about.com, 2014.

17. Les cahiers de doléances du peuple chinois, Le Monde Diplomatique, 2010.

Children in a school of migrants The Library Project Donation, Shanghai, June 2014 Personal picture

A lot of people criticise this system, saying that it provided employment to a vast army of petty officials employed, and deprive people from their rights.18 19

It means that he can have exactly the same rights than the other children. In China the descendants of migrants inherit their parents’s non-local Hùkou status, and are officially counted as migrants, generation after generation. It does not matter how long their parents are stayed. It means that in China, even if you have never known the countryside of your ancestor or your migrant parents’s hometown, you are linked with it. Even if your entire life takes place in Shanghai since your birth, you are still considered as a “foreigner”.

Although the Hùkǒu system has not completely disappeared, it has lost most of its former force and is no longer used to control and intimidate the population. Today we could qualify the situation of these workers as a sort of apartheid. Personnaly, I think this system of registration is too old. It does not correspond any more to the current movements of populations.

Less social rights

If this household registration system is a way for the government to control people, it is also a real brake to the migrants’s happiness. Indeed, the Hùkǒu prevents the migrants from benefiting completely from their rights. So, many migrants are confronted with legal discriminations, creators of disparities and privileges.

I believe that the government should find a new way to manage its flows of population, by combining social, equity and integrity. That is why numerous reforms of systems are born. Most of the time, they obtained only a small success. In spite of mentalities which evolve, the uncertainty and the injustices which undergo these populations make migrant workers a population in the heart of the debate.

It is very difficult in China to change a licence of residence place as the Hùkǒu. Only the marriage and the work, for certain important companies connected to the State for example, can give a new licence to a person. But, the majority of the population of many Chinese cities have no local Hùkou. In Beijing, 38 % of the inhabitants do not possess it.

18.

The Hùkǒu, instead to be a way to control migrants, is still a measure which prevents people from exercising their rights, or even, to be completely incorporated in the life of the city in which they are living20.

Hù

Informations from Chloé Froissart, in her text

Household, family

called Le système du hukou : pilier de la croissance chinoise et du maintien du PCC au pouvoir, 2008. Centre d’études & recherches internationales de Sciences Po.

20. The Guardian, http://www.theguardian.com, China reforms hukou system to improve migrant workers’

19. La presse chinoise réclame la fin du passeport intérieur,

rights, 31/07/2014.

Le Monde, 03/04/2010.

户口

Kôu Mouth

#1 T HE M I GRA T I O N S I N C HI N A 5 . W ho a re the m i g r a n ts ?

If we take the definition of the NBS21 Rural Household Survey, the migrants are defined as “the rural inhabitants who left their usual locality of residence for work outside during the calendar year”, regardless of the duration of migration and the number of trips made during the year.

Here we are. Having settled the frame and presented the context of this essay, which is a crucial step, I am now going to go into the heart of the matter.

A man walking with his baggages along a railway line in Beijing Wang Zhap / AFP /Getty Images

Who are the Chinese migrants?

While in many countries we call «migrant Workers» all the different actors of the movement from the countryside to the cities, the rural exodus in fact, it is more frequent in the politico-social Chinese language to use the indistinct term but ideologically more charged : “peasant workers».

I have tried to draw a kind of profile, to know a bit better this population. This profile, or informations relative to the migrants, have been found thanks to the National Bureau of Statistic’s datas.

The Chinese migrants are generally called the Nóngmín gōng, and this term is often abbreviated to Míngōng.

Sometimes, a population of people can be characterised by its age. At least, it can help to know who is in front of you. That is why I wanted to know the average age of migrants. It appears that most of migrant workers are predominantly young. Indeed, most of them are generally under 30 years old. In 2004, 61% of migrant workers were under 30 years old, and only 8.6% were 45 or above. Seven years after, In 2011, 39% were bellow 30 years old,

According to the official terms which many sociologists throw reject but who are used by the majority of the statistics, a peasant worker does not come necessarily directly from the agriculture. A Míngōng is a worker of the industry or the services, exiled from his community of origin. Most of these migrant workers do no possess a licence of residence place (Hùkǒu), connecting them with the place where they live and work.

How old are they?

21. National Bureau Statistic. The National Bureau of Statistics is in charge of statistics and economic accounting in China, 2012.

22.7% were aged 31-40, 24% were 41-50 and 14.3% were older than 50 (NBS 2012). These datas has confirmed what I observed during my researches on the field about the fact migrants are generally young people.

on construction plants, 10.1% in wholesale and retail services, and 5.3% in hotel and catering. Their social situation can be very different, and their activities are varied. Nevertheless, various terms were born to qualify their works. In a french TV emission entitled Thalassa23 and focus for one episode on Shanghai, the journalists tried to know the different believes around the migrant jobs. The meaning people have created around the jobs environment is interesting and I learned some of these terms. The «blue-collar workers» for example, work in buildings or in the manufacturing industry. The others, the «white collars» work in the restoration, in some hotel business or in the sale. It is even possible to see mechanics qualifying themselves of “black collars», in reference to the mechanic’s dirty clothes. Most of them will do everything to don’t be a «muddy collars».

This description still mostly applies today, but the proportion of older migrant workers has been increasing every year, because a lot of the migrants who came 10 or 15 years ago are still in the cities where they moved. In other words, the migrant population is actually ageing, and nowadays, its demographics are pretty the same than the general population.

What are their jobs?

The first vision people have about migrants workers, and I had the same at the beginning of this work, is referring to all these men working on the amazing Shanghai Tower and in some factories. This vision is not false. But of course, the migrant population is working in several different sectors. Migrant workers are generally employed in low-qualified and low-payed jobs. Among these jobs, according to a survey realised in 2011 by the ILO, the International Labour Organization22, 36% of migrant workers worked in the manufacturing sector, 17.7%

away from home to find a work, but his family stayed in his hometown24. Sometimes, married man acquired a second wife away from home. Moreover, as the migrant population ages, couples from different provinces who meet in their urban employment locations are increasingly common. I believe that it is normal that young people build a sentimental life in their arrival city. Due to the fact these young couples did not share a rural hometown, many of them choose to raise their children locally in the urban areas. This is how a migrant children population is born. The option of leaving children behind in rural hometowns is also contingent on the availability of caregivers in the hometowns, usually the grandparents. For many young migrant households, the grandparents are themselves migrants working in the cities. This is another reason why migrants moving with their whole families are becoming increasingly prevalent.

Gender According to the fact a lot of migrants went to the cities to work, especially on the construction plants, it was normal to see single men made up the majority of migrants. Indeed, the family migrations were less common. Most of the time the man of the family moved

24. Exactly as the situation evoked in the movie Last Train Home.

22. ILO, International Labour Organization, http:// www.ilo.org/, about the Chinese Labour Migration.

23. Thalassa, TV emission, watched on 14/06/2014.

Education Of course the migrant population is suffering a lack of education. But surveys show it’s evolving. Still according to the NBS, in 2004, 2% of migrant workers were illiterate, 16.5% had primary education, 65.4 had middle school education, 11.4 had hight school education and 5.4 had middle occupational or tertiary education. In 2010, the situation was a bit better. Indeed, at this time, 1.5% of migrant workers were illiterate, 13.2 had hight school education and 9.7 had middle occupational or tertiary education. The education is not always a priority for migrants. Indeed, when the primary need is to earn money to support the family, school and education are sometimes forgotten. But as the datas show, these populations are today more educate. It is currently one of the most crucial objectives: give to these people a good education. #8

And in Shanghai?

In Shanghai, the number of non-locals increased from 1.7 million in 1986 to 9 million in 2010, which was 39 percent of the city’s population26. For the only year of 2006, they were 385,703 to come in Shanghai. After the discovery of these datas, it became impossible for me to think Shanghai without the population of migrant workers. It was exactly as if those migrants had come to be transplanted to this boiling city.

I am living in Shanghai, and I am walking in the Shanghai’s streets everyday. That is why I wanted to know the situation of migrants in my own town. Through researchers, visits and interviews, it appears that Shanghai was, and is still today, the quintessential city for many migrants. Basically, the place to be. As an example, we can take the political and the financial stability of Shanghai, which was an important attraction. Add the excitement about the fact to live in a burgeoning and cosmopolitan hub, and the idea of a safe and modern city, and you obtain Shanghai. Around the 1920s, the population of shanghai was well over a million and growing rapidly. By the early 1930s, the population was over two million, and three quarters of the people were born outside Shanghai. A good idea of the importance of migration for a city as Shanghai25. Shanghai, and Beijing, are the two richest and most important cities in China. Both their economies and their non-local population have grown vastly over the years, and both cities attract migrants from all provinces in the country. 25. http://chinaperspectives.revues.org/456,

Migrant

Worker in Shanghai, Laurence Roulleau-Berger and

26. Holly H. Ming, The Education of Migrant Children

Shi Lu, 2005.

and China’s Future. The Urban left behind, 2013, page 32.

#1 T HE M I GRA T I O N S I N C HI N A 6 . Di f f e re n t acto r s

the migrant workers. These people are the parents of the children about whom we will speak later in this dissertation. As relatives, I wish to underline their situation. It is also a good way for me to know then, who are the children of migrants.

As I said before, there is different type of actors in this migration. By actors, I want to underline the people who are acting as migrant labor force. Of course all their lives are different, but their social status are similar. It was important for me to know what they were doing, and I will present here, some of their activities.

An actor is someone playing a role, in a movie, or in a play. The man leaving his hometown to find a work, the entire family living in a migrants area of Shanghai, or the child left-behind in the countryside, they are all actors of the migration. They all play a role in this massive amount of moved population.

A lot of workers evolve in factories and other plants. Generally, this population of workers is constituted of young women, who move to the factories in Special Economic Zones in their late teens, before they marry. Most of the time, these young women are unskilled and have at most lower middle school education27. These women live and work in the same place : in their factories. One of the biggest issue for them, added to the huge quantity of work, is the fact that the contact with local people doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really exist.

But, besides these main actors, some other people have a card to play. As an example, the government and the employers are also, in their own way, actors of these migrations. Indeed, I think that these indirect actors have a place in the migration process, by controlling or by using migrants workers. A plant manager, having migrants for main workforce, is according to me the witness of the migrations, but also a major part of this doubtful system. Instead of speaking about all people touching closely or remotely the Chinese migration, I am going to be concentrated on

Factory Workers

27. China Labor Watch, http://chinalaborwatch.org, informations and stories about factory workers.

Construction Workers

Everybody knows that China has known an incredible construction boom over the last three decades. Shanghai, the city in which I live, is the perfect proof of this transformation. The Pudong area was nothing 20 years ago, and is now a place with impressive constructions. Due to this construction boom, most of the Chinese cities and towns have been completely rebuilt28. It means for example that new airports have been constructed across the country, but also railway stations, ports, and a huge network of high-speed roads. All these projects needed workers and have been built by armies of workers, almost all young men, almost all migrants.

Domestic Workers

The situation of Sami is the same than a majority of migrants. Sami lives in Shanghai since few years, she is under 30 years old, and she works as an ayi in different houses. She come from Jiangsu province, and her family, her two children, are stayed there. It means that Sami is able to see her child only few times during the year. She explained to me this is generally during the festivals, like during the moon festivals or during the Chinese new years. To provide money to her family, Sami has choose to come in Shanghai.

There is an other large group of migrant workers : the domestic workers. Even if it was not appreciated during the Mao’s period to show sign of richness, during the 1980s, China has known a widespread return of servants and domestics. Indeed, after three “classless” decades in which domestic labor was considered as bourgeois and was most of the time limited to the discreet homes of the political elite, domestic jobs reappeared. According to some datas from Diana Lary’s book29, it seems there is actually more than twenty million domestic workers in the cities of China, almost all of them women. I was surprised when I arrived in China to meet the nannies, called in China : ayi or baomu. I learnt later that these women were generally migrants.

Most are contract workers, even if other forms of recruitment are gaining ground. Generally, they live directly on construction sites. It is normal to see temporary buildings or tents put up on the edge of construction plants, often without sanitation, water or electricity. During my exploration on the field, in Shanghai, I was used to see a lot of these construction sites, with all those temporary buildings for the workers. These districts of prefabricated building are real cities where the migrant population is living.

I found in the person of Sami30, the Ayi who come in my flat, a very good speaking english contact. Her testimony and feelings were particularly relevant to know, especially because she is a mother having her children stayed in the countryside. 29. Diana Lary, Chinese Migrations : the Movement of People, Goods and Ideas for over four millenia, page 156/157.

28. Diana Lary, Chinese Migrations : the Movement of

30. Interview with Sami, domestic worker living in

People, Goods and Ideas for over four millenia, page 156.

Shanghai, 29/09/2014.

Through these different situations I wanted to precise how these people I called actors, live. Their social condition is often characterised by their works, that is why I believe that is fundamental to know it. These factory workers and these domestics workers are the main actors of the migration, but the entities who make them moved, like the government or basically the promise of a better situation through the jobs are also major agents of migrations. #10

#1 THE MIG RATI ON S I N CH I N A 7. R el a t i o n in the s ocie t y

This known image of a poor and dirty worker, this cliché, was doubtless at first in agreement with the Chinese mentality, which approved discrimination, what contributed to the growth of China. Nevertheless, with the development of new China and the evolution of the mentalities, this bad image arouses today some empathy to Chinese people. The opinion denounces widely the indifference of the power towards this population of migrants. New expectations and new hopes are allowed for the Chinese migrants.

migrants in an unsettling process. Antimigrant sentiments are common in the society, and I can feel it living in a city as Shanghai. In the areas where the labor migrants are most numerous, a lot of negative stereotypes flourish. Most of the time, migrants are associated with crime, immorality, dirt, and with taking jobs away from local people. Basically, people are afraid about of the idea of losing something or being less safe. Theses themes are identified in any immigrations society, but they are accentuated in China, due to the size of the recent movements. Rich people are more and more rich, poor are more and more poor. The two populations do not communicate and the cohabitation is difficult. During my researches, I felt a gap between the different population, making communication almost impossible

Unwelcome migrants and discriminations

Nowadays, there is a lot of discrimination around the migrants. In Shanghai, the citizens don’t like the fact that migrants are coming in town to work. Even if they are themselves the grandsons of moved people31, they are receiving 31. Interview with Maggie, met during a donation

#11

Let’s have an example in term of cohabitation and discrimination. In the city of Xiamen for example, there is actually two migrants for one local32. For a lot of Chinese, being outnumbered in their hometown produce a feeling of insecurity, and then, the discrimination appears.

trip with the Library Project in a school of migrants.

32. Interview with Valérie Nichols, in charge of project

June 2014.

for the China Labour Bulletin, in Hong-Kong, april 2014.

It is the first and the major kind of discrimination. But, on the contrary, feel sorry for these people can also be discriminating. The antipathy that migrants encounter is sometimes strong enough to be a second form of discrimination.

#1 T HE M I GRA T I O N S I N C HI N A C o n c l usi o n o f the F i r st Pa r t

Indeed, according to official figures published by China’s National bureau of Statistics, there were 250 million of internal migrant workers in China at the end of 2011. It represents one-third of the country’s labor force.

Through the history of China, the migration and the movements of people have always been present. Sometimes in a hard and cruel way, as the wars, sometimes, in a more favourable context, at least less violent, but always anchored in the Chinese culture.

As I said before, these workers have contributed to China’s impressive economic growth, helping generate over two trillion US dollars worth of exports in 2012. But there is also a less felicitous side to their rise. At the bottom of the Chinese urban hierarchy, migrant workers have formed what I call a new underclass, caught in the urban-rural divide as the country experiences rapid growth and urbanisation.

Nowadays, an important amount of people are still moving and experiencing a travel far away from home, to found better life conditions. Nevertheless, although people seem to know and to assimilate the migration, migrants have difficulty in asserting themselves and in being listened to. Some of these movements are still not accepted, and the migrants’s situation is not that easy.

Passengers returning home for the Chinese New Year

While these internal migrants cheap labor has fuelled urban growth in the last 30 years, their rural residency permits, prevent them and their children from accessing the social services that urban government provide to local city dwellers.

The mentalities have evolved, but the society is not ready to incorporate durably the migrants into its functioning. The result is disturbing. This migrant population is one of the strongest voices in China, but is still non-listened when the question of rights and recognition is approached. Even if those people are indispensable to China, their status do not seem to be clear.

Adam Dean / Bloomberg News

#2 T HE C HI L DRE N L E F T BE HI N D

#12

#2 THE CHILDREN L EFT BEH I N D

Having chosen to work on the migrant population, I was also fascinating since the beginning of my experience in China by the relations present inside a family. Children and grandparents for example33. Interested by the different generations, I feel concerned by the children’s conditions of life, who are basically the adults of tomorrow and the next actors of the Chinese society. That is why I decided to focus my researches on the children of migrant.

and China’s Future, The Urban left behind”. It was the same kind of tittle than mine, including also the fundamental term : left behind. The fact is at this moment of my researches, I didn’t define towards which kind of child my work would be turn, and the term left-behind was quiet large. The children left-behind in the countryside? For them, the term left-behind reflect well the fact they stay alone behind. The children left-behind in the cities? For those, the term left-behind is more a way to say they are often alone, without the presence of parents and in marge of the society.

I will take as a starting point a crucial moment of my phase 0, during the beginning of this big End of Studies Project and dissertation. In June 2014, I had a brain wave about a fundamental term for my project. Indeed, during this phase 0, I called my poster “Children of migrants, the child left behind”.

To be honest, I though at this time that I will work for the children of migrants left in the countryside. But, considering the fact I am living in an urban area, it will be more relevant for me to work for the urban children. After all, those child are also the left-behind and as I can be closer to them, work for them is more powerful.

Having made a lot of researches, I read a book write by Holly H. Ming, called : “The Education of Migrant Children

After the presentation of the context and the exploration around the migrations in China, I am going to speak now about the life of the migrant children, the main aim of this dissertation.

33. Discussion with Jeremy Cheval and Jing Rong Hou, teachers at the China Studio, during the first steps of my ESP and Dissertation Project. April 2014.

#13

#2 THE CHILDREN L EFT BEH I N D 1. Conte x t

About the family in China

back to school, during the weekend, in the parks, etc.). It seems that there is a real link between old and young people. Of course in Europe, grandparents are very important too, and they also educate their grand children. For example, my grand father teach me how to garden and how to fish. But I was not used to be all the day long with them. I see my grandparents during the main festival (christmas for example), or during some holidays. That’s all.

As a foreigner deep into a new culture, some habits and behaviours of Chinese people were a surprise for me. By surprise, I mean a good surprise. The kind of discovery which will change your way to think and event to live. Among them, the life into a family in China. Because I’m speaking about my researches around children, it was absolutely necessary to speak about the family.

So, the idea of a particular link between this two family members came to me. It was my first concept of the Chinese family.

Before to go deeper in the observations about Chinese families, I wish to express my feelings, because they are something important, maybe among the firsts steps I wrote for this dissertation.

The family in China, a base

The family seems to be the base of the Chinese society. For a lot of Chinese people, the family is almost a religion.

When I was walking in Shanghai, during my firsts days in China, I was surprised by the grandparents chilling and enjoying the life in Shanghai with their grandchildren.

The family is something essential and central in the life of a Chinese. Indeed, for the Chinese people, the main social relationships are within the family. Then of course, come friends and colleagues. But the family is really thought as a fundament in China. The family might reflects the Chinese philosophy and the society.

My first reaction was : “Wow, grandparents and child are so closed!”. Indeed, for Chinese people the relationship between grandparents and children is really important. We can see a lot of old people educating their grand children (on the way

When we are talking about the family, in China it is referring to at least three generations (direct descent, marriage, and cousins). In China, the basic social unit is the family. Historically, Chinese had to be disciplined and educated, they should be willing to sacrifice their personal wellbeing for the benefit of the group and the family.

Take care of elderly people

Today, in China, there is approximatively 185 million of Chinese people who are older than 60 years35. This is growing, because they will be 487 million, meaning 35% of the Chinese population, in 2053. This phenomenon is due to a better lifestyle and also because of the one child policy.

The family is also an economic unit : land, estates, furniture, everything belongs to the family and not the individual. European culture is much more oriented to individual.

Since not a long time, it exists a law who obliges Chinese people to visit their old parents regularly, or at least keep in touch with them. In fact this is a revised version of the « law for the protection of the rights and the interests of the oldest «. This law obliges the grandchildren to help people over 60 (daily, financial and spiritual needs). This law show the concern of the government to manage the ageing of the population and the solitude of the oldest. But, to my point of view, it’s also a way for the government to keep going a family model.

In Chinese, the term «family» and the term «nation» or «country» are always linked34. A «country» is Guō jiā, which literally means «country and family.» To describe the negative impact of the war, people say “Guopo Jiawang“ , meaning “the country is broken, the family dies”. There is also a poem saying: «the family peace above all prosperity.» China is also considered as a big family for Chinese.

35. CNN World article, the new Chinese law about the 34. Adèle Foucart, Past it on in China, page 22.

visit of elderly people, 2013, http://www.cnn.com.

observe the child, when a stroller passes for example.

It was primordial for me to underline the importance in China of the way to take care of old people and grandparents. Finally, it is not so far from what I though during my firsts days in China : relations in the Chinese family and between the different members are fundamentals.

To finish, it’s still natural in China, for economics reasons, to cohabit with the different generations in the same house. This proximity encourage grandparents to take care of the children.

Grandparents and kids in China

When the parents work, it is an economic and normal situation to confide the children to the grandparents. In China, a country where today a lot of women are working, it is normal for a busy couple to call their parents to take care of their children. We can see it in the cities, but also in the countryside, when parents have to move for work.

Grandparents in the countryside

If I wanted to insist on the grandparents situation in China, and to obtain more informations about them, this is also because the grandparents stayed in the countryside are playing a role in the migration. Indeed, even if they don’t move, and even if most of the time they are not the migrants, they are really important. Basically, they have to replace the parents moved36. When the parents decide to move to the cities to find a better job, and when they prefer to move alone, without their children, the grandparents become the new relatives.

There is also the fact that old Chinese people are the parents of the one child generation. It means that there were in the past authorised to have only one children. It’s a new chance for them to take care of a children. That is why a lot of people will say : ‘‘in China, all the old people love the children’’. It is normal to see in the street some old people taking some time to

36. Last Train Home, a Lixin Fan film, following migrant families, 2009.

They have to take care of the child, they have to educate them and be present for them. That is also why, the relation grandparents / children is very important, even in the countryside. It appears for me that the family in China is something really strong and I feel more comfortable with the concept of a family in China, which is an essential stage for my future work. A context is established, I am going to talk now about the heart of my subject : the children. In order to understand the situation of these child, it was important for me to settle the base of the family. A children is the member of a family. Now that I know more about the family in China, understand the life of a child should be simpler. #14

#2 THE CHILDREN L EFT BEH I N D 2. W h o a re t h e c hildre n le f t be hind?

#15

To describe the situation of the children of migrant, these massive population of child living, in spite of them, the migration through their parents’s lives, I choose to split them into two categories.

In the countryside

According to my researches and the datas I have found, there is more than 250 million rural-to-urban migrant workers. When all these rural workers leave their hometowns, looking for a better situation elsewhere, most choose to leave their children. Recently, the Chinese government estimated that there were around 20 million children left behind in the countryside37.

In first, I am going to present the children left-behind in the countryside. The parents of these child are moved to cities, with the hope to increase their lives. Then, I will introduce the children who follow their parents in the migration. These child are living with their parents and experiencing the migration with them. The situation of both these children presents similitudes. But it’s important to understand their own daily life.

Among all the datas I collected from different sources, it was difficult to have a good idea of their number and of the children left behind’s ages. Then, I found something, a report from 2007, writing that the All-China Women’s Federation38 team did a study based on one percent of the population. This survey gave me more precise informations. Indeed, this research team estimated they were about 58 million children below 18 years of age left behind by parents in the countryside, accounting for 21 percent of all children in China, and 28 percent of all rural children.

and that more than 30 million were aged between six and 15. Most of them are pretty young. I wanted also to know what was the provinces those children came from. It appeared that the children were not only found in the traditional migrant worker areas of western and central China, but also along the east coast. The children left behind are particularly present in 6 provinces : Sichuan, Anhui, Henan, Guangdong, Hunan, and Jiangxi, accounting for 52 percent of all China’s left-behind children. In the areas the most knew for migration in China, the proportion of left-behind children varies between 53% and 83% of all children. I was surprised at this point to discover that children of migrants count as a big part of the entire population of child.

Something important for me was to know the age of this population of children, to then have a better idea of the people I wanted to work on. This same survey showed that more than 40 million leftbehind children were under 15 years old39,

This survey showed also the part of children living alone, or with an other member of the family rather than the parents. Always according to the China Labour Bulletin, 47 percent of left- behind children were living with one parent, usually the mother. But sometimes the mother will also leave later, going to join the father to work. Then, 26 percent were living with grandparents and

38. http://www.womenofchina.cn/, All-China Women’s Federation, 2007. This website and association offer comprehensive informations on the way China’s women live today.

37. China Labour Bulletin, Paying the Price for Economic

39. China Labour Bulletin, Paying the Price for Economic

Development, the Children of Migrant Workers in China,

2009.

primary or middle school. Even when seats are available, the migrant families are often asked to pay substantial special fees to enrol. As a result, their only road to hight school and college is to return to their hometowns.

27 percent of left- behind children were living with other relatives or friends or with no adult care at all. As, I said before, these children are quite alone. Because parents are absent, away, almost all the time. The fact to live with grandparents or other relatives instead of the parents, make the child affected. Indeed, these children did not have a stable environment to grow up properly.

While some migrant workers who move from rural areas to Chinese cities for work, choosing to leave their children behind in their hometown villages, more and more bring their children with them, or raise their city-born children in urban areas.

In the cities In two of the China’s largest cities, Beijing and Shanghai, there are now respectively about 450.000 and 500.000 migrant workers’ children40. An increasing proportion of these young second-generation migrants are born in the cities to which their parents migrated for work. They are not migrants anymore. They never known the countryside. As any other Shanghai children, they are part of the city. But, their status do not change and do not allow them to evolve properly.

These young urban population which interests me, are children of migrant workers who came from all over China to work in the cities, like Shanghai. Many of those children moved to shanghai when they where very young, or are born in the cities. Their residency permits, or Hùkǒu, follow those of their parents. Basically, they are registered in hometowns that they barely knew. Consequently they are not entitled to some of the public services that their local schoolmates, having a Shanghai Hùkǒu, enjoy. In terms of education, they are not guaranteed to have a seat in a public

40. Holly H. Ming, The Education of Migrant Children and China’s Future. The Urban left behind, 2013, page 5.

Indeed, added to the suffering of being separated from their working parents and experiencing a lack in term of relatives presence, these children are also suffering a disadvantaged social condition41.

One of their greatest needs is, of course, education. In the big cities, these children have a limited access to public primary and middle secondary schools. And the ones able to attend public schools must pay hefty fees. That is why many of them attend private and low quality schools, operated for migrant students only. Because of policies related to the household registration system, migrant students are not allowed in the public schools and in the different public hight school education system in the cities. Added to these different difficulties to have an access to education, students are generally linked to their Hùkǒu’s city. For a children living with his family and having a Hùkǒu connected to an other city than the one he lives, it is almost impossible to join an university. It means that for many children of migrants, education stops abruptly at the end of middle school. If they want to go to university, they will have to go in a city which they do not know, the city of their Hùkǒu. These children of migrants, living in urban areas, are witness of a social barrier. They are rejected. They are left-behind.

41. Interview with Sebastien Carrier, manager at Stepping Stones Shanghai. 15/09/2014.

#2 THE CHILDR EN L EFT BEH I N D 3. S ep a r ate d c hildre n For these left-behind child, the family situation is not stable at all, and they generally lack contacts with their close family42.

A survey from the Changsha municipal government44 showed that 44% of these children saw their parents once a year. As Qin and Yang’s parents, most of the people decide to go back home only once a year, during the Chinese holidays, a very important moment in the Chinese culture. Almost the same proportion of children, around 45%, can see their parents a bit more : twice a year. Worse again, 3% see their parents once every two years. These datas are valid for the children of migrants stayed in their countryside. As you can imagine, the children of migrants, in urban areas, can see their parents everyday. But, even for these urban children, the presence is not strong enough. Actually, their parents are present a couple of hours per day, and that is not enough in term of supervision.

Indeed, due to the fact their parents are moving, or always at work, children of migrants need to be help and educate by other people.

#16

But I believe also that, in an other hand, being left to fend for themselves might have the opposite effect, increasing selfreliance, self-confidence, and initiative. But the absence of their parents is more aches than the idea of a gain of autonomy.

The most important issue for the children of migrants, and it will be one of my End Studies Project challenge, is the separation from their parents. Because their parents tend to work very long hours, often including involuntary or coerced overtime, migrant children may face reduced supervision relative to non-migrant children, which likely has deleterious consequences.

I often take as an example the movie Last Train Home43 from Lixin Fan, because this movie was revealing for me of the migrants’s situation and a good source of testimony. In the movie, both parents are working in a big industrial city, far away from home. Their two kids, Qin and Yang are stayed in their hometown. Qin and Yang are able to see their parents only once a year, when they go back home for a week, during the Chinese New Year. The only adult presence they have is their grandmother’s.

Both of these children, in the countryside or in the cities, are experiencing a lack in term of relative presence. According to me, both of these children can be called the children left-behind. They are all partially suffering solitude.

42. The Independent, Website, China’s Left Behind Children : it’s not what you think, article by Nyima Pratten, October 2012. http://www.independent.co.uk/. 43. Last Train Home, a Lixin Fan film, following migrant

44. Survey from the Changsha Municipal Government.

families, 2009.

The most burning issues which appears for me when I’m in front of these datas, is the communication. The natural link between parents and children is lost. I had the feeling during many interviews that parents are not more parents for these children, they become strangers. The parents attendance, symbolised by presence, advice and even love, doesn’t exist in these kind of situation. Left-behind children are living with different members of the family, such as the grandparents, sometimes with friends or other relatives. But the family situation is definitely not stable enough for the children, due to the fact they have a limited contact with their parents. Of course, because we are living in a connected world, it exists some way to communicate between populations, between a children stayed in his hometown and his parents moved to a city. Obviously, the main way to communicate is the telephone. Internet is not enough developed among these populations to allow them to communicate properly.

A survey realised in Beijing by Lu Shaoqing45 in 2005 about the social and psychological conflicts of the left-behind children, showed me relevant datas about the communication between parents and children. In order to then maybe improve the problems of communication between migrants and their children, I wanted to know how they established a contact in such a situation. According to this survey, it is proved that 80% of these children talk regularly with their parents thanks to the telephone. Regularly means almost once every two weeks. Then 30% have this talk only once a month. Of course it’s a still a communication. But, to my mind, definitely not enough for a children. The study specifies also that the duration of these calls is approximately 3 minutes. 3 minutes, once every two weeks (or less), to speak about the entire life and daily life activities of a child. It means it is impossible for these families to have real discussions. Everything stay on-surface. Impossible for example for the parents to be really present for their child.

For the parents, the success of the children is something important. That is why, during those 3 minutes calls, the main subject is about the school results, or, naturally, about the children’s living arrangements. But it didn’t go deeper. Parents don’t have enough time during those rare calls to speak about their children’s feelings, about their needs, or about theirs wishes.

45. Lu Shaoqing, Beijing, 2005.

46. China Labour Bulletin, 2009.

at an arranged time. The number of the public phone in my school’s kiosk is 7254897. I hope you can call me when you receive this letter. If I know your number, I can call you too. I long to hear your voices every day! But this letter will not be sent because I don’t know where you are....” This letter is the perfect example to show how the communication between a child and his parents can be broken. The children who wrote this letter expresses his feelings, the lack of his parents, and also, in a crucial part explains that he knows that he cannot contact them.

Here is a children’s letter I found in the China Labor Bulletin46, dated from 2009. “ Papa, mama, You are not with me now. Every time you go, you stay away for at least half a year. I miss you so much. Whenever I dream about you, I cry. When grandpa hears me crying, he says your hearts are cold. But I know you are working hard in other places for me. One day, I passed a kiosk in my primary school and saw a sign that read “public phone”. I wished I could call you, but I did not have your telephone number. All I could do was look at the phone and cry. Papa, mama, I am writing to ask for your telephone number. I will be as happy if you just give me a public telephone number where I can reach you. I could call you

Of course what we have here is a huge issue for the children. They are alone, and they lack presence and advice from their parents. But, that is also something chocking for parents. Indeed, among these millions of mothers and fathers moving to find a job, 80%47 have left their children behind to be cared by others. Four-fifths of these parents are separated from their children. I am working on the children’s situation and about their feelings, but I think this situation has also repercussions on the life of parents.

parents say they are distracted and not capable of giving the best of them and, two-fifths of these worker parents report making frequent errors at work. The distance, the separation and the lack of communication are affecting at the same time parents and children.

The Story of Zhao Yan

Reading an article from the Wall Street Journal49, about Children of migrants, I found the testimony of a left behind young girl. The article tell us the story of Zhao Yan, 16 years old, living on her own in Anhui. Zhao Yan’s mother is died when she was younger, and when Zhao was old enough to live alone, her father decided to move in Shanghai, to find a job.

The fact is that the feeling of these parents is really important too. Always from this survey, I learned that 80% of the parents who don’t live with their children say to have feelings of inadequacy, and 70% feel guild and anxious. These bad feelings due to the absence of relation between parents and their children can have repercussions on parents’s job. For example, 60%48 of

This is how the Wall Street Journal describe the life of the young girl, trying to underline the fact she is most of the time alone : “On most days, Zhao Yan wakes early, then takes a 30-minute bicycle ride

47. A survey released on january 2014, by the ChildRights and Corporate Social Responsibility, Beijing. 48. China Daily Europe, http://europe.chinadaily.com, by Fan Feifei and He Dan, January 2014, Leaving home

49. Chao, L., Children are left behind in China, The Wall

to find work takes heavy toll on families, study finds.

Street Journal, January 24th 2007.

This absence of parents and this life devoid of a stable situation reminded me the fact that this child have to act alone most of the time. Indeed, this situation pushes them to the autonomy, to take decisions, and to kept on themselves. A kind of autonomy which can, according to me, bring confidence, as well as auto-reclusion. In order to underline this kind of reclusion, I found a study giving precision about the way children deal with) a problem. This survey50, realised in Yunfu City, with 3,086 left-behind children from primary and middle schools, showed that about half of the respondents said that when they encountered problems, they tended to solve them on their own. Less than one third would go to their parents and only five percent would talk to teachers.

to school. After school, she returns to an empty home to cook for herself. Her dogs run out to the road at the sound of her voice when she gets close to her small brick house. They sit by her as she begins her daily ritual of lighting a fire in the large brick oven she uses to cook. An elderly woman who lives next door occasionally visits, and sometimes Zhao Yan has friends over. But the dogs and a borrowed blackand-white television are often her only companions. The middle-school student does her homework by the glow of the screen and listens to music videos in the unheated house”. The Wall Street Journal has choose to take the example of the food, to say that the children can’t live alone, and need to have the presence of parents. Indeed, Zhao Yan’s father leaves about 100$ for her each time he goes to the city, usually for two to three months at a time. She uses the money to buy groceries, mostly vegetables, because she waits for her father to return to eat meat, which is more expensive. Without her father around, Zhao Yan says she sometimes skips meals. It is obviously difficult for child to manage themselves, to live alone and to have a healthy life.

Because they don’t have the presence of their parents, these children have to manage them themselves and by trying to act on their own, they lose any other kind of contact and can face dangerous situations.

50. China Labour Bulletin, 8 may 2009, Yunfu City, a city of the Guangdong province.

#2 T HE C HI L DRE N L E F T BE HI N D 4 . A vul n e r a b l e p o p ul a t i o n

After an email exchange with Valérie Nichols, a woman in charge of projects for the China Labour Bulletin, I got some informations and datas about the children well-being and about accidents and crimes they were victims. I learnt during this exchange how children of migrants can be a vulnerable population. Valérie Nichols is based in Hong Kong where she is working for this amazing source of informations, and she send me a report about the children of migrant’s, dated from 2008.

work in towns and cities, leaving their children in the care of grandparents or other relatives. When the latter are either unable or unwilling to look after them properly, these children often end up on the streets, eventually drifting into petty crime or being exploited by ruthless adults.” There is in this report a lot of informations underlining the facts that most of the times, kids are victims of their parent’s situation. The first crime these children are victims, because for me it’s a crime, is the child labour. Indeed, a lot of these child, in the countryside as well as in the cities, are forced to work. The convention N°138 of the International Labour Organisation (ILO)52 has established that the minimum legal working age should be no lower than the age of completion of compulsory education, and under no circumstances lower than 15 years of age. By the way, the minimum age of employment within the

This report is called : The consequences of Parental Labor Migration in China for Children’s Emotional Well-being51. It is a part of the the China Labour Report, underlining the fact children can be victims of their parent’s situation. Here is one part very relevant and which I am going to use as a review of this bulletin . “Most workers from poor rural area have no options but to travel long distances to seek

52. International Labour Organisation (ILO), The main aims of the ILO are to promote rights at work,

Girl in a school for children of migrants

51. China Labour Bulletin, Research Report N°3, 2008,

encourage decent employment opportunities, enhance

Shanghai, June 2014

The consequences of parental labor migration in China for

social protection and strengthen dialogue on work-

Children’s emotional well-being.

related issues.

Personal picture

Then, I believe that children of migrant can be victims of their situation in a different way. Indeed, because of a lack in term of supervision and positive goals, some children can easily turn to crime. Some studies53 about the psychological health of those left-behind child have shown that migrant children have higher hostility scores than the norm. Basically, some left-behind children blame their parents for leaving them, or transfer their anger and shame on others, due to the fact they are not supervised enough.

territory of the People’s Republic of China is 16 years of age. All persons employed between the ages of 16 and 18 are classified as juvenile workers (Wèi chéngnián gōng, 未成年宫) and are subject to specific legal protections. They are protected to work in some dangerous works, as the mine for example. However, within China, and particularly in rural areas, there are large numbers of legal minors or children engaged in some form of work, after dropping out of school early. Added to the dramatic fact children are working, their working condition are generally much worse than those of adult workers. Children workers perform low-skilled, highly repetitive work every day, and their working hours are long for low wages. Due to this hight rhythm, their health often suffers significantly because they dare not complain to their employer about the adverse effects of their working conditions.

But these kind of case is not only present in the countryside, where children are living without their parents. According to some Fujian Police stations’s datas I found, 60 percent of children arrested for public disturbances, in an urban area, like pickpocketing and theft, were left- behind children.

These different studies and surveys showed me that, when a child is not supervised enough or frustrated, he is more able to commit crimes and to make errors. These population of children leftbehind is thus more touched by the small crimes and offences than the other ones.

Two surveys by realised by the Public Security Bureau54 in 2004 showed that 80 percent of all cases of juvenile delinquency were found in rural areas, and most of them were made by left-behind children.

53. Measures to improve the psychological health of left-behind children,

石泉县关注留守儿童网

(Left-behind

children website of Shiquang county), 25 October 2007.

The children labour is one of the crimes experienced by migrants’s child.

54. In China, a public security bureau (PSB) (Chinese: 公安局;

pinyin: Gōng’ānjú) refers to a government office

essentially acting as a police station or a local or provincial police force.

Donation in a school for children of migrants Shanghai, June 2014 / Personal picture

#2 THE CHILDR EN L EFT BEH I N D 5. T h e L ef t -beh ind c hildre n s y ndrom e

I remember when I was a child, when my parents left me even only a while, I quickly felt a feeling of anxiety or fear. A normal feeling for a child I think. I also know that some children who grow without relatives presence, or without affection, can later present a behaviour different from a child who has always knew the love of his parents. For example, some of my friends, students in a school for specialised educators55, call that phenomenon the “emotional deprivations”.

Among those specialists, the professor She Mao56, from the Central South University of Changsha, conducted a field survey in Hunan, Anhui and other provinces. Thanks to the survey, he said : «Very few left-behind children are healthy and lively… less than 20 percent.» He said also : «Deprived of love, more than 60 percent of children manifested mild to moderate psychological disorders.» In the article, from the China Youth Daily57, the professor She explain the case of a 10 years old girl he had met in a hilly village in Hunan province. This little girl, experiencing the departure of her parents was confide to her grandparents. Her grandparents said to the professor she cried the whole day when her parents moved, and then, nothing. Since that, she is quiet, no one has seen her shed a single tear, and no one has heard her utter work. She is like totally absent. Basically, she is chocked.

That is why I wished to know more about the effects of the parents’s absence on the children. The term “left-behind children syndrome” appeared in my researches. So, it appears that what specialists call the “left-behind Children Syndrome”, is due to the separation from parents. Basically, the fact that children are far away from parents, and the fact there is no real communication between them, can cause some form of mental distress for the majority of left-behind children.

56. She Mao, Central South University of Changsha.

It was interesting for me to know what could be the different causes of all those bad feelings. Of course the absence of parents is the main one. But maybe, the environment that parents propose to their child when they move (confide the children to someone else) is also a cause of distress for them. I am not sure I would have been satisfied if, when I was a child, you had confided me to somebody else than my parents. That is exactly what these children are living.

and 60 percent did not want their parents to work in the cities. I think that the feeling of these children is to be uncomfortable without parents at home. That showed that the environment of the children is also important, and that when a children is not in confidence with his environment, his mental can be affected. Even if once again, the absence of parents seems to be the most burning issue for these children. An other interesting survey was presented in “The Consequences of Parental Labor Migration in China for Children’s Emotional Well-being”59, by two authors, Qiang Ren and Donald J. Treiman.

To continue in this direction, and understand why a nice environment can increase the feelings of a children, I found some datas in a survey established in Sichuan. As a reminder, Sichuan is actually the province with the highest number of left-behind children. From the survey58, 60 percent of children said that their “new relatives” did not treat them as well as their parents. Even if the answer seems logical, when we asked to these leftbehind child what they waited from their parents, 75 percent of them wanted their parents to come home as soon as possible,

They tried with this study to determine some aspects of the left-behind children well being. It was really relevant for me to know the feelings of these children. I cannot measure the felt of all these children, and this study is a good way to approach their emotions, through concrete cases.

57. China Youth Daily, article about the Left Behind 55. Interview with Charlène Pierkarz, student in a

Children Syndrome, 3 June 2008. Experts claim the

58. China Youth Research Center,

中国未成年人数据手册.

59. The Consequences of Parental Labor Migration in

school of specialised educator, working also with

problem of left-behind children is so serious it might

China’s Children and Juveniles Statistical Handbook.

China for Children’s Emotional Well-being, by Qiang Ren

disabled children.

endanger the future of rural China.

Beijing, Science Press, p.241.

from Peking University and D.J. Treiman from UCLA.

adult should have. For me, a child should not find that the life is meaningless. But it is a feeling directly linked to his migrants’s situation.

I am going to summarise their work. Firstly, the real feelings of the child. For each item, each proposition, respondents were asked how often they felt this way during the past month : almost every day, two or three times a week, two or three times a month, or once a month. The response categories were scored from 1, which represent “never”, to 5, which represent “almost every day”.

1. I feel I’m valuable, at least not worse than others. 2. I feel that I have many valuable qualities. 3. I can do things well like most people. 4. I am positive about myself. 5. Generally speaking, I am satisfied with myself. 6. I hope to gain more respect for myself. 7. I can control things that happen to me.

After they tried to know the feelings of the child, authors tried to know how the children felt with their selfesteem. These questions were asked only to 10 year olds children. The stimulus for each item was a four point scale: “Totally agree,” “Agree,” “Disagree,” and “Totally disagree.”

Here are the results

1. I feel depressed and cannot cheer up no matter what you were doing. 2. I feel nervous. 3. I feel upset and cannot remain calm. 4. I feel hopeless about the future. 5. I feel that everything is difficult. 6. I think life is meaningless.

The result are quiet hard. Indeed, in a first time it seems that child have rather normal feelings, like a brief moment of depression, anxiety or nervousness. But their most present felts are directly connected to their life and to their future. These children are confronted with feelings which only an

This survey was revealing to me, because it is showing the real feelings of these children.

About low Self-esteem

1. After all, I consider myself a loser. 2. I indeed often feel I am useless. 3. I often think I am good for nothing. 4. I don’t think I can solve the difficulties I am now facing by myself. 5. Sometimes I think I am forced to do things due to my hard life.

High Self-esteem

What we can see is that the migration and the migrants’s life condition are directly affecting the well-being of the child. This situation affects the children and make them unhappy or mentally upset. #17

«DEPRIVED OF LOVE, MORE THAN 60 PERCENT OF CHILDREN MANIFESTED M I L D T O M O D E R AT E P S Y C H O L O G I C A L DISORDERS.» Pr. Shu Mao, Central South University of Changsha.

#2 THE CHILDR EN L EFT BEH I N D 6. No w way to e s c ape

Due to their situation, but I think that is also due to the society’s mentalities, it is very difficult for the migrants to escape their situation. The main hope of migrant parents is to earn enough money to support their children’s education. As many parents, they want their child success, they want to provide them a decent job.

Always in relation with the study, the same survey shows that for children of migrants, the way to escape their situation is not always linked to education. Even if they understood their parents’s expectation, many of them do not see the need to perform at school. Among the children interviewed, more the than half wanted to be a migrant worker or go into business after middle school. Only one third of leftbehind children saw studying as a path to achieve their goals.

But sometimes, the money given by the parents to send their child at school is not enough. I am going to take the example of rural children left-behind. According to a national survey comparing rural children with parents and rural children without relatives, it is showed that a child lacking help, care and supervision will see his school level falling60.

A researcher in Guizhou wrote an article about some feeling of urban students. He measures these feelings through and interesting medium : slogans and gratifies. Among these slogans he noticed these kind of sentences : “After graduating middle school, it is time to leave home for work”; “If you don’t study hard, make up for it with hard work” or “You can’t leave for the city until you have finished middle school”.

Due to the parents’s absence during the homework time at home, or because the absence decentralises the children, it seems that the wish of the parents to see their child succeeding thanks to the school is not always realisable.

I T S E E M S T H AT M A N Y O F THESE CHILD ARE STUCK I N T H E I R S I T U AT I O N

I think personally that many migrant parents do not have time and knowledges to help completely their children to succeed at school. Devoid of this kind of parental pressure, many child of migrants have no way to escape.

children have developed the ability to take care of themselves, work hard and study hard. However, many have developed serious behavioural problems. It seems that many of these child are stuck in their situation. So, even if their relatives expect a lot from them for a success at school which would allow them to escape, many are actually considering as normal to follow the way of their parents.

According to him, many left-behind children end up taking low paying jobs in the cities, just like their parents in fact. Left-behind children face more of life’s adversities than ordinary children. Without the care of their parents, some

60. A survey report on left-behind children in Qingdao, 28 March 2007. Quoted in the China’s Children and Juvenil Statistical Handbook.

#3 C HI L DRE N O F M I GRA N T S I N URBA N C HI N A

#18

CHILDREN OF M I GR AN T S IN U RBAN CH I N A

C HI L DRE N O F M I GRA N T S I N URBA N C HI N A 1 . S i t ua t i o n

Despite being long-term residents in the city, these children are treated as outsiders. They live in the same city than local children, but their daily life is really different. They donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t live under the same blue sky than local children.

#19

Indeed, if I have approached previously the similarities between the life of children stayed in their villages, and the life of those moved in the cities with their relatives, I am going, in this part, to argument around the risks that child of migrants meet during their urban life. The education, the health but also the society assimilation, are themes I am going to approach to speak about the situation of these daughters and sons of migrants, living in the Chinese cities.

I am going to introduce now the last part of my dissertation. Having in a first time approached in a general way what was the migration, through the Chinese history and the strong links China have with it, then having in a second time described the Chinese migrant workersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s situation, and especially their childâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, I am going now to be focused on the life of migrant children in urban areas.

Their rights to medical care, education and social participation are limited, leading to a higher incidence of physical and psychological problems, and a greater vulnerability to crime. Indeed, the left-behind children, term referring to the children who live with one parent or extended family when their parents are absent from home, can also be the rural migrant children. They are left behind partly because of their little access to basic welfare in cities, due to their rural Hukou status and partly because of the high living expenses in cities. Having visited schools and having exchanged with migrant families, I know today that the left-behind urban children will have more health, emotional and behaviour issues than those who grow up with their parents in a stable environment.

#3 C HI L DRE N O F M I GRA N T S I N URBA N C HI N A 2 . H e a l thc a re

According to Leilei62, a 32 years old migrant women and mother that I have interviewed, migrants will visit a doctor only in dire emergencies, when it is often too late. Because of the price of medical assistance, for many migrants as Leilei, the health is not a priority, it is not a reflex any more.

During my researches, on the fields or after having read articles, I noticed that the access to basic health and the way to have a good medical assistance was very difficult for a family of migrants. Indeed, for a major part of the migrant families, having a low budget and living in poor conditions, the cost of seeing a doctor in the Chinaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s commercialised healthcare system can be prohibitively expensive.

In 2007, many provinces have decided to provide free medical examinations for migrant children. The doctors who helped to examine these children found that although some children suffered from serious health problems, they had never once sought medical treatment. In a free medical checkup campaign realised in Wuxi in 200763, only 16 percent of 1,020 migrant children were found to be free from disease. Basically, the children of migrants are victims of their difficulties to access healthcare.

There is some important costs to know in term of health access. In China, and for the year 2010, the average medical consultation and medication fee in community clinics was approximately 83 yuan61 and the average fee for in-patient services was 2,358 yuan. That is expensive. And thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s more expensive if you add to that the fact that, during this same year, for a young migrant, a salary per month was around 1,660 yuan. It is impossible for migrant families to consult often a doctor. That is too expensive.

62. Interview with Leilei, living in a migrant area near

Tea in water, Chinese wellbeing

Honquiao Road.

Beijing 2014 / Personal picture 61. China Labour Bulletin, Migrant Workers and their

63. China Labour Bulletin, Migrant Workers and their

Children, 2009.

Children, Part 2, 2009.

I always take as an example the families and all these datas comes from studies relating parents’s stories. It is due to the fact that is more easy for me to have an access to these stories and datas. But, according to my reasoning, what affects a family, affect also the children. That is why these figures are relevant.

can, thanks to his knowledges of the patient, establish reliable medical control. It is difficult and delicate to compare both situations, because I am speaking about two different countries. I just want to underline the fact it is very difficult to be close a child who moves to follow his parents.

Here is a data base concerning children. A report, released by Shaoxing Women and Children’s Hospital in 201164, explains that the death rate of migrant children aged below five is actually ten percent, compared with about five percent for local children. It means that due to the fact children of migrants have a bad access to healthcare, they suffer more.

Something relevant was create by some regional governments. The idea developed is a kind of new registration system for migrant children aged under 16. The goal of this registration is to create a communication between the children’s home towns and their cities of residence, sharing datas on social security, healthcare and education. It could be a very good solution to follow these children in the way to provide them healthcare.

Added to the cost of the health access in China, the high mobility of migrants ant their children can also make more difficult for the officials to determine their health history. Indeed, follow them and establish their medical profile is not that easy. A child in France is used to consult one doctor, always the same one. A relation settles down, and the doctor

The sight problem

problems and who don’t wear glasses can miss his schooling.

I met Sebastien Carrier65, from the NGO Stepping Stones66, and during our exchanges, he explained me one of the biggest problem concerning health, for the children of migrants. Sebastien told me informations about this eye care program they have in Stepping Stones. According to him, eyes problems are not something important for the migrants, because parents don’t care if their kids have a bad views.

Through this example of the view, I understood that the access to the health is not just a question of money. I think that the way of bringing an healthcare access and the way to make people sensitive about health can be very important. Sometimes the mentalities are not ready, and I think that the design can play a role, by providing to these people a new kind of decent medical aid.

As an example, he told me that if a day they give glasses to a child, trying to improve his learnings, the next day, the same children will not wear the glasses, because parents think that wear glasses will be a brake to their son’s growth and success. Basically, it’s totally the opposite. A child having sight

The assurance is an other big problem in term of health access. Because migrants do not earn a lot of money, and because of their social status, it is very difficult for them to have a good insurance. Sometimes it is just impossible. I tried to understand a bit better the insurance system in China, even if this is something always difficult to assimilate, in particular because the cases are not the same across countries.

65. Sebastien Carrier, manager at Stepping Stones, meeting and interview, 15/09/2014. 66. Stepping Stones China is a non-governmental organisation, working for the children of migrants in urban areas. They want to increase the english lessons in the schools of migrants and provide healthcare to

64. Shaoxing Women and Children’s Hospital, 2011.

the child.

The insurance

The Chinese government understood the fact it is difficult for migrant population to have an insurance, so they tried to develop different insurance schemes over the last two decades, to make healthcare services more affordable for migrant workers67. That is great. But there is a problem. Most of the time, the children of migrant workers are outside the remit of such schemes. To underline the fact these children are often out of the insurance program, a 2012 survey in Cixi (Zhejiang) found that 57 percent of migrant children did not have any medical insurance. Indeed, it exists currently three types of Chinese medical insurance. Among these three type of insurance that I found thanks to the Migrant Labour Bulletin and that I am going to present, none covers effectively migrant children before they start school.

Indeed, official figures from 2012 show that only 16.9 percent of rural migrant workers employed outside their home area had employee medical insurance. If the migrants covered by an insurance want to protect their children, they have to present a certificate of study, and this process will exclude pre-school migrant children and those who are in unregistered private schools. It means that is not a viable system for many migrants and their children. Only a very little percentage can be covered thanks to this insurance. The urban resident basic medical insurance scheme, the second one of my list, covers unemployed urban citizens, including students and retirees. But not migrant workers. It would have been too beautiful. This insurance, once again, is not a viable system for migrants and their child.

The first one, is the basic medical insurance scheme for urban employees. This insurance should cover all urban workers, including migrant workers, but in realty, just few migrant workers are covered. 67.

http://hir.harvard.edu/archives/3205,

The last one is a new rural co-operative medical care scheme and is often the only option for poor migrant families with pre-school children to have an insurance. However, this scheme is designed to cover only rural residents. In my case, exploring the situation of the urban child, this system is useless.

Harvard

International Review, about the Health Status of Migrant Workers in China, January 2014.

Through all those examples, we can understand how it is difficult for a migrants to provide a good insurance for his children. It seems that the actual systems have all incompatibilities with the situation of the migrants. Most of the time, the migrants are forgotten from the systems of protection. I think that a new kind of insurance should be created, to cover this population which only want to have better life conditions.

For example, in some places, government have implemented vaccination schemes, and it includes now both local and migrant children. However the take up rate of migrant children is usually lower because their parents are not as well informed about such schemes as local residents. I believe that the improvements are there and are present in the new mentalities. But they must be pushed again. Nowadays, everybody should have a good access to the health. This is not the case for these migrant people.

In some provinces or cities where the level of migration is the higher, for example Shenzhen or Hangzhou, authorities have decided to provide the same level of insurance for migrant children68. They can have the same rights than the local. But of course, that is not common practices, and unfortunately, all China is not ready to envisage such measures. Some other regional authorities try to improve the health access. Even if itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not a complete access, that is a beginning in term of healthcare and also in term of equality. 68. Migrant Workers and their Children, China Labour Bulletin, June 27th 2013.

#3 CHILDREN OF M I GR AN T S IN U RBAN CH I N A 3. Educ at ion

The Confucian system

The educational situation

As I’m writing about children, it was important to speak about education. Because this is something primordial for a child, and also because education is very important in China. Ever since ancient times, Chinese people from all social ranks have always attached a great importance to education. During the antiquity, the emperors of China educated their sons thanks to many intellectuals coming from the entire world.

During one of my observation in a school a migrants, I met Jenny, a Chinese teacher. She was in these school for a donation, because she is sensitive to the cause of these children. Usually, Jenny is an english teacher, in different schools of Shanghai. During our meeting, I asked to Jenny about education and how students were learning in China. Jenny said : “in China, the pupils are very respectful of the professor. It comes from our past, and from Confucius”. And I heard that several times, in different discussions. Here is how I have began to be interested in this education culture and in the values of Confucius.

As more and more migrant workers have chosen to bring their children with them into urban areas, educate them is became indispensable.

The Confucian system is an easy explanation of the family education situation in China. Indeed, the family life is still organised into a hierarchy, because to be older means being wiser, and younger, needing advice. In this case, the link is absolute, generally more hardly than in many western countries. That is pretty the same at school. The student has to listen and copy the master and the teacher.

Indeed, the education of this massive moving population of migrants is one of the most pressing problem for the Chinese educational system. Even if the government want to improve the education situation around migrants, the way to provide a good schooling quality for these children is still difficult today.

#20

For example, according to the Beijing Municipal Education Commission statistics69, among the 400,000 migrant children present in Beijing, 63% were enrolled in public schools, 4.6% in private schools and 26% in unregistered migrant schools. Some of them don’t go to school at all, 6.4% at this time. I think that the poor schools of migrants don’t give to urban migrant children a real chance of scoring high on the college entrance examination and don’t give them socio-economic opportunities for their future.

Due to the important population of migrant children, the government wants also to stop the development of a Chinese urban underclass, and in the same time, rise the juvenile delinquency. But for that, the government needs to improve the migrant children’s education, with some education reforms. Actually, the main problem for the migrant population, is to have an access to the public school. In clear, have the same rights than the local children. This access is really difficult to obtain for the families of migrants and their child. Indeed, after the emergence of the migration phenomenon, the government and the Hùkǒu system have excluded the children of migrants from the public school, and from other critical social services.

When I met Sebastien Carrier, who works for the NGO Stepping Stones, teaching english in the migrants schools and trying to improve the life of children of migrants, he gave me some very interesting informations. Among these informations, an important one, the number of children in public school, and, the number of children in the migrant school, in Shanghai. We have to keep in mind that the situation of these children is much better in Shanghai, thanks to the policy organised at the time of the Universal Exhibition, in 2010.

That is why, a lot of private migrant schools has emerged in China, as a low-cost option for migrant children to obtain an education. Of course, the quality of the education in these schools is not the same than in the public school. This bad quality of education is due to the fact these schools have low subventions, have bad infrastructures and can’t hire experienced teachers.

69. Beijing Municipal Education Commission statistics,

But, as the phenomenon of migration is became something common and something really present in the daily life of Chinese people, it was necessary to improve the laws and the regulations around this problematic. That why, in 1995, the government has decided to go deeper in the way to provide attention to the migrants. At this time, the Ministry of Education launched a survey around the education issues of migrant children, to be able then, to improve their situation.

In some other cities, their situation is worse. According to Sebastien, 40% of them have a place in a public school, when the rest can’t attend normal public schools and go to one of the 151 specials schools for migrants. The facts is some of these schools are illegal, or not good enough to be called school. Thus, beginning with the 1998 «Provisional Regulations on Schooling for Migrant Children,» the Chinese government issued in 2001 a series of reforms underlining the Chinese cities responsibility to educate migrant children. Something difficult, because of the mentalities. For example, some cities didn’t want to use local taxpayer finances for migrant children, or some local parents didn’t want to see migrant children in their own children public schools.

A first document was created : the Way on Migrant Children and Teenagers of Right Age Going to School70. This document was created and sent to people to settle different new laws and regulations for migrant children. This document stipulated some regulations around the education of migrant children. One of those regulation was to give a compulsory education to the child, by asking to the different regional government to supervise the problems.

The Way on Migrant Children and Teenagers of Right Age Going to School During a while, China was not really interested about the migrant populations and did not pay enough attention to the migrants, and particularly to their children.

70. The Way on Migrant Children and Teenagers of

2007.

Right Age Going to School.

school is perceived by various manners71. That is why, even if it’s a vector of civilisation and of progress, the school is also criticised by people who think that some types of education allows to blind population. Anyway, today, the school is the mainspring of the social ascent and sometimes, the school results prevail on the nonconformism and the creativity.

It has been an important step on the way to resolve migrant children’s education’s problems by encouraging receiving areas to adopt various ways to resolve the problems. It provided law and regulation to migrant children’s schools which had already sprang up at that time and the teaching level in the schools of migrants has rapidly increased after 1998. Sebastien, from Stepping Stones, explain me that before all these measures, most of the school of migrants were categorised as illegal. These measures make the schools more developed and more legal. More able to educate properly the children in fact.

Seen by the Westerners, the way of teaching the Chinese young people seems exceeded. Indeed, the pedagogy is based on the rehearsal and the “by heart”72. To make a success in exams, the most mattering is to remember quite the cases and quite the possible answers.

China’s education system

In China, the education system follow this plan : 6-3-3-4. It means Chinese young people spend six years in a primary school, three years in a middle school, three years in high school, and then, four years in college. 71.

About.com,

http://chineseculture.about.com,

Introduction to School and Education in China, by Lauren

The studies and the education are something essential for people in China. Nevertheless, in the Chinese history, the

Mack. 72. Xia Yu, Learning Text by Heart and Language Education : the Chinese Experience, 2013.

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Class in a school for children of migrants Shanghai, June 2014 / Personal picture

In Shanghai, there were 277 migrant schools in 200774. In 2012 there were around 160, and they were all licensed. Since 2006, the Shanghai government has issued a series of policies to officially incorporate migrant schools into the official education system. The quality of the teaching is actually better in these schools than some years ago.

to teach and educate the child, and have a look on their situation. The situation in there was very different from the schools I saw in town. The Library Project is an association working not only in China, but also in the rest of Asia. In term of donation, it is generally books, furniture and random equipments. Indeed, the books are a strong vector of education. Because those schools are poor, most of the time, the furnitures and equipments are shelves, toys and radios. The idea is to improve their education quality and interact with them. I believe that these kind of donation and meetings can influence the children.

#21

By discussing with my english professor in China, Mr Jeff Westel73, an American english teacher working in Shanghai University, certain points prevailed. For example, the faculty for the students to learn an important quantity of informations thanks to their books. A good point I think. But, Jeff also said that the biggest problem of the Chinese student was to not be able to speak by themselves, to not let place to the debate and to the discussions. While our English classes in the China Studio was mainly based on the exchanges and the discussions in English, impossible for Jeff to practice it with his Chinese students.

The schools for migrants’s children

In China, and in a city like Shanghai, migrant parents have usually two solution to educate their children: the public system and the private system. It is very difficult (most of the time impossible), to have a seat in a public school with a non-local Hùkǒu. And it is difficult for the migrant families to pay an expensive private school. When a child of migrant can not go neither to a public school, nor to a private school, it exists the schools of migrants. In these schools the education is less good, thus I spoke previously.

The Library Project, an association trying to improve education.

A lot of associations, like The Library Project75, try to improve the quality of the education in the schools of migrants. I am going to speak about the activity of the Library Project, because I went in a school of migrants for a donation of books, in the border of Shanghai during June 2014. My will was to discover how these children worked, but I wanted also to interact with them, and be part of this donation program. It was very relevant to discover the way 74. Holly H. Ming, The Education of Migrant Children and China’s Future. The Urban left behind, 2013, page 32. 75. The Library Project, The Library Project donates

73. Interview with Jeff Westel, english teacher at

books and libraries to under financed rural primary

Shanghai University.

schools and orphanages in Asia.

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#3 C HI L DRE N O F M I GRA N T S I N URBA N C HI N A 4 . S o ci a l , ge o g r a phi c a l a n d cul t ur a l m a r g i n a l i z a t i o n

they live, the migrant population can be called the floating population.

I named this part of my thesis “social, geographical and cultural marginalization”. In fact, I wanted to underline some aspects of migrants children social life. As a main term of this title, the word marginalization is really important. This word is important because the main issue for those children, in term of social or cultural assimilation, is the gap between them and the local children. Through some examples, I am going to show how inequalities and disparities are often present for these child.

The discrimination can also be relative to the low parental support, and it can be difficult for a children to be completely settled in a city life. A 14-yearold boy who came to Hangzhou when he was ten years old said : “I come from a rural area. Now I am living in a city, but I am not living a city life. What am I – a half city-dweller and a half peasant? My parents are busy working and they do not pay much attention to me. Many times, I feel very lonely. My parents have no time to care about me... Most of the time, they stay in a dormitory. Otherwise, they come home late and go out early. I usually only see them a few times in a month. And when I see them they just nag me about my performance in school or lecture me about other stuff, like if I were a three-year-old. When I feel lonely, I watch TV, or wander around the neighbourhood, or go to internet bars. I feel better when my parents are not at home. Local children are very lucky; they eat well, live well and wear Nike and Adidas. They look down on us. It is difficult for us to make friends with them.”

A social segregation

An important fact felt by migrants children that I noticed during my observation and through my interviews, is the feeling to not be a part of the city in which they are living. In a study realised by the China Youth Research Centre76 on the social adaptability of these child, 88 percent of migrant children in Beijing said they did not see themselves as Beijingers and 11.2 percent felt they neither belonged to the capital nor to their home towns. Because they do not feel as rural and because they do not feel as a part of the city in which

Woman hanging up clothes on a line

76. China Youth Research Centre of Beijing.

Shanghai, Jingan area, november 2014 / Personal picture

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reasons, the communication and the exchanges are complicated between local and migrants. According to me, without any communication, the barriers will not fall.

Due to the situation of parents, one of the most important discrimination appears. Indeed the social situation of these families place the children in a situation of inferiority. They cannot feel close to the locals children. According to me, their actual feeling is to be too different, by always comparing their situation with the local’s. But I am also completely sure that there is a link with our modern society disparities. Of course, the testimony of this children shows the absence of parents, pushing him to say : “other families are better”. But, by saying: “other children are lucky, they wear Nike and Adidas”, I have the impression that this child raises a bigger problem. This problem is completely linked to our consumer society. How a child, living through the migration of his parents can hope to take part in this consumerist society? In my opinion, the society has created these disparities and can be the cause of these differences.

This lack of communication, this social gap, has created and enforced stereotypes among migrant and local children. A survey in Beijing revealed an “us” and “them” attitude among migrant children. For migrant children, urban residents are usually seen as richer, better dressed, more knowledgeable and speaking better Chinese than them. Among the children, the stereotypes are present too. I remember, when I was a child, in France, the clichés between the public and private schools students were strong. Sometimes in a funny way, but always very revealing. This is exactly the same between the local and the migrant children. A survey in Guangdong found that 58 percent of students in migrant schools did not like or even hated local children77. The same survey showed that

Without communication, no assimilation As I said before in this dissertation, the different populations do not communicate. Indeed, due to different

77. China Labour Bulletin, The Children of Migrant Workers in China, 2009.

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#22

migrant children do not have local friends and 33,7 percent do not want to have local friends because they said the locals were arrogant, looked down on outsiders, were spoilt and were careless with money. Some local parents reinforced this attitude and did not want their children to associate with local children.

26 percent said they disliked locals because they were bullies, and 37 percent said city children looked down on them. I am sure that the non-communication between the different children push them in the wrong direction. I have been able of having as my best friend a student from private school, while I came from the public. Then, why a child of migrant could not become friend a local child? Because actually, the lack of communication blocks their relation.

I am confronted to a very strong problem of stereotypes. Due to a lack of communication and recognition, both populations know each other badly and do not envisage any kind of discussion. This strengthens the marginalization of the children of migrants.

This same study showed that half of the migrant children played only with other migrants. Indeed, 40 percent of

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The discriminations at school, a reflection of the society’s

situation, but also, to know the point of view of these locals.

The discrimination at school is common and particularly difficult for the migrant children. A study in Changzhou78 shows that a third of the children allowed to follow the classes in a public school, were often or sometimes mocked or teased. But, added to these discrimination, these children are not integrated by the other local pupils. In Beijing, 33,7 percent of migrant children said they were not accepted by locals, and 40 percent claimed they were discriminated against79. In some other studies I find, the proportion of those suffering from discrimination could be as high as 76 percent.

“There is a student in our class who comes from Anhui province. Most of us eat the lunch arranged by our school which only costs about three yuan a day. However, this student only eats rice buns. We asked him why he did not eat the lunch prepared by the school. He said he likes eating buns. In fact, the actual reason is that he does not have enough money for the school lunch.”

潘芳

An other student said :

“There is a boy from the countryside in our class. He wears dirty clothes and his face is black, as if he has not washed it properly. He does not like talking, does not have any friends, and performs poorly in school. He always fails examinations.”

Thanks to China Labour Bulletin, I found some local children testimony. A way to understand the migrant children

78. Pan Fang

The words of two local students, about their migrant classmates :

(2006), a survey on the current

circumstances of compulsory education for migrant

If some public schools did not want to include migrant children in the classes, it is in part due to the local parents. Indeed, parents are generally afraid about the presence of migrant child among their

children, masters thesis, Department of Educational Administration, East China Normal University, p.25. 79. Lin Jin, Rights-base approach to the Educational Experience of Migrant Children in China, 2012.

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own children. For example, around 1999, migrant children in Wuhan80 have been allowed to study only in designated schools. But when some schools tried to bring migrants into local children’s class, local parents claimed that their children’s studies would suffer and the plan was abandoned. Both of local children and their parents do not help in the migrants integration. I think sometimes it is not in an hostile way. The quarrels and the groups have always been common at school. Nevertheless, once more, certain stereotypes continue to prevent the children of migrants from having their chance. The last example shows that the pressure from local parents condemn inequitably children of migrants.

left-behind in the countryside. But, that is also something fundamental for the children living in the cities. In this part of my dissertation, I want to speak about the different places I went to meet and discuss with migrants, all these migrants districts composing Shanghai. When I went to walk and observe in these atypical and coloured districts, I had the impression to be out of Shanghai, to be in an other city. The life is not the same in these areas, and the habits are very different from those of the Pudong business men. Living in a relatively closed area, migrants actually know almost nothing about the city they are living in. I am definitely sure migrants never go in some expensive areas where local people are living, they do not have this spatial contact, this cleavage. A 2006 survey by the China Youth Research Centre81 showed that 69 percent of migrant children lived in migrant enclaves, usually located on the outskirts of the city. In these areas, the number of migrants compare to local residents could be 20 for one.

At Home

The home environment is something important for a child, for his well-being and for his own development, I have already spoke about that before, underlining the situation of the children 80. Xinhua Daily Telegraph, Wuhan : parents objet to plans to hold exclusive classes for migrant workers’s

81. China Youth Research Centre, 2006, around the

children, may 26th 2006.

migrants homes.

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The life quality in these suburbs is not as good as in some centre area. Living in migrant enclaves far from the city centre makes social integration difficult, and limits the chances for children of different backgrounds to meet. We can speak about a geographical disparity and it is easy to measure it through a city as Shanghai.

them were composed of 2 or 3 rooms, for the same amount of families. It means that it is difficult for a child to develop its own feelings, in an environment which is not totally his, because shared by many people. When I want to speak about the home environment, I want also to speak about the tangible assets migrants’ family has.

The environment, the home, is important, as the geographic place of living is. The situation in a migrant’s house is not so good as a local’s. Indeed, the home environment and the lifestyle are not the same between a children of migrant and a local children. To illustrate this point, a study realised on 3,872 children in Hangzhou82 explains that about 85.5 percent of local children have their own room compared to only 25.6 percent of migrant children. Have a room and own his own “business” are very important for the children development and make the child more autonomous and more confident. A lot of the children of migrants do not have a room. Among the migrants’s houses I have visited, most of

According to a study realised by the State Council’s Working Committee on Children and Women83 in nine cities, 60 percent of migrant families did not have a refrigerator and 63 percent did not have washing machine, whereas almost all local families had these furnitures. Here is an other example of “life furniture condition”, underlining the situation of migrants. At the time, there were only 35 television sets per 100 migrant households in Guangdong and 11 percent of them had internet access compared with 164 television sets and 61 percent net access among 100 local households respectively.

82. Yan, Zheng, A comparative study of migrant workers’ children’s health and behaviour, PhD Thesis, Zhejiang

83. State Council’s Working Committee on Children

University, page 15, 2006.

and Women.

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#23

of communication between them, these population experiences difficulties to cohabit. The migrant children are still a leftbehind population and can not have the same hopes as the local children. All these facts make them marginalised children.

To conclude this part treating disparities whom migrants are witnesses, I would say that there is an important social gap between the local children and the child of migrants. Due to their social and geographical situation, due to their behaviours, but also due to a lack

D U E T O A L A C K O F C O M M U N I C AT I O N AND RECOGNITION, BOTH P O P U L AT I O N S K N O W E A C H O T H E R B A D LY A N D D O N O T E N V I S AG E A N Y KIND OF DISCUSSION

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#3 CHILDREN OF M I GR AN T S IN U RBAN CH I N A 5. S t epping S tone s

Stepping Stones China

children in China, but they are in charged of random other activities. As Sebastien explained to me and as I said before, in term of health, by taking preventive action, in particular linked to the children’s sight problem.

To improve my knowledges and trying to meet more children of migrants, I had an appointment with Sebastien Carrier, a Canadian, working at Stepping Stones China. He is became since this rendezvous my tutor. I have already evoked his name in my dissertation, but I’m going to introduce the Stepping Stones’s missions.

To success in such a big mission, Stepping Stones is working with expatriate and local Chinese volunteers, especially to teach English in the Shanghai’s migrant schools and also in different Community Centres. These are their 2 main working spaces : the schools and the community centres, which are places where children can come to play, learn and exchange. It is a big mission, because, they are only 7 employees with Sebastien, trying to recruit, train, coordinate, and support around 200 volunteers, to teach 4,000 students in 20 migrant places in Shanghai.

Sebastien is in China since 10 years, an in Shanghai since 5 years, and he works for Stepping Stones since 1 year. He is Program Manager at Stepping Stones, in charge to coordinate the different teams. I met Sebastien in the Stepping Stones building, located near Honquiao Road station, on the line 3/4. Inside this building, an entire open space office, gracefully given to some NGO by a rich Chinese having made a fortune in the real estate.

Sometimes, they also bring groups of volunteers to teach English to children in rural schools outside of Shanghai, but most of their action take place in Shanghai.

Stepping Stones is an NGO, a Non-Governmental Organisation. In fact Stepping Stones is a not-for-profit charitable organisation registered in Hong Kong and Shanghai. The mission of this organisation is to improve the education and the general welfare of disadvantaged

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#24

Sebastien insisted also on the facts that parents are working a lot, like 6 or 7 days per week. Meaning kids are often alone, and not supervised. For example, during the week-ends, or after school, child go in the community centres (when they have one closed to their home), or just in their area, playing in the streets.

I asked Sebastien to tell me more about the migrant population and about these children. These informations are quiet similar with what I found by myself, exploring in Shanghai or searching in books or Internet. That is why I have decided to summarise it in this part. This informations are giving precision around migrantsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life and habits, and I used it throughout my dissertation.

Because Sebastien and Stepping Stones are working in partnership with migrant schools, he gave me more informations to understand precisely the schedule of one these children. The children go in class 5 days per week, from Monday to Friday, from 8:00 and until 4:00/4:30 pm. Stepping Stones is working for the schools of migrants. The situation for these schools is more difficult, sometimes catastrophic, due to the same reasons I described in a previous part. These schools receive just Âź of the normal subventions sent by the State, and in the worst, there is 60 or 70 students per classes. It is clearly impossible to have a good education in this situation.

For Sebastien, children of the Shanghaiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s migrants school are almost all son and daughter of ayi, construction workers, restaurant waiter, or factory workers. I knew that, but Sebastien told me some precisions, like the fact that even if the life is difficult for them in the city, they have a better salary by coming in cities. Most of the time migrant families share the house where they live. Usually, there is 2 or 3 families under the same roof, in a 1 or 2 bedroom(s) house. Generally, they have no access to water, and no toilet. They have to go in some common spaces in the streets, to have access to the water.

Altruism and open-mindedness in public spaces Beijing 2014 / Personal picture

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C O N C L US I O N

#25

CO NCL USI ON

labor skills, income, life style and habits. But the situation in China is different. Different because of the Household Registration System. Indeed, the Hùkǒu hinders both spatial and social mobility. Most of the time, developed countries have introduced a lot of social welfare policies and provided equal treatment and opportunities, for both locals and migrants, to help those floating population to be integrated in the urban landscape. In China, children are still victims of their migrants’s status. They are still foreigners in their country.

Nowadays we are witness in China of the largest human migration of the history. The migration is a part of the Chinese culture, due to the actual massive amount of moving population, but also due to the Chinese past. Especially in a city like Shanghai, where migrants are coming to find works and to find a better quality of life, be in China means also be a part of the migration. I understood thanks to my researches and through this thesis that the masses of rural people moved to cities have been problematic to China. Even if China has known a profitable economic growth, these movements of population have also created disparities and social issues. Indeed, this demographic shift exposes a new social category and a new rural class : the migrant workers.

The Hùkǒu is one of the reason why Chinese migrations are the most complicated and difficult, especially for children. Generally, migrant children are not registered in their new urban homes but in their parents hometown. The result is that they are unable to access public benefits as the local people, they are marginalised.

Among this population of migrants, nearly 100 million children live in the disparities and in the apprehension of their future.

Children who migrate with their parents are victims of inequalities, and their child status does not change anything.

From an historical point of view, such phenomenon is appeared during industrialisation and urbanisation periods, in a lot of different countries. Generally, the main issue for these floating population was to do not be adapted to the urban society

118

These left-behind children lack care, protection and guidance and the most important issue for them is the lack of communication. The risks they face are both psychological and physical. Their rates of childhood injury and accidental death are higher than their peers.

They often can not access to a lot of essential health, education and social benefits. The children left behind when their parents migrate are more vulnerable to injuries and neglect, but the children moved to the cities with their relatives have to face alone the life and the dangers of the urban world, a world not totally ready to give them the keys of success.

China has to take care of these children, by showing, gratitude, recognition and by giving them a chance. These children, as the young locals, represent the future of China. It would be an error to leave them behind.

Children affected by migration may face greater risks of violence, trafficking and labor exploitation, added to the absence of reconnaissance from other citizens. The children left-behind by migration suffer the burdens of separation. Many of them see their parents rarely – often only once a year. The situation is quiet the same for the urban children who have to wait their workers parents all day long. As an example, ten percent of the left-behind children live on their own, or without any family members. To recreate a presence and a stable environment for the child, some parents make their child live with grandparents, but those new relatives have limited ability to care for young children, and it is not enough in term of supervision.

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TOWARD A DESIGN PROJECT I am going to introduce a projection of my End Studies Project. Indeed I see this dissertation as the beginning of something, as a tool helping me to construct this End Studies Project.

O PEN I N G

I have been able to manage properly my design project, thanks to the datas I have collected through my observations, interviews, meetings, and through the different surveys I read. Here is my vision. If I have in my hands the keys to well understand people, I will be able to build a relevant design project. The communication between children and their parents, the confidence and the autonomy of the child, but also the question around the way to provide healthcare, will be the main axes of my design project. I am now closer to the population I am going to work for, and I think that my designer work, a work oriented on the user and on peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s habits, will be richer and stronger, thanks to this anthropological dissertation.

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ACKNO W L EDGEM EN T

I would like to thank all the people who helped me to write this dissertation, by bringing me the informations which allowed me to understand my subject, by offering me their time, but also by giving me an access to the information, in particular Mr Sebastien Carrier who follows even today the evolution of my design project.

A woman and her baby

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Shanghaiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s streets / 2014 / Personal picture

B IB LI OGR APH Y

Child and youth care / Critical Perspectives on Pedagogy, Practice and Policy by Alan Pence and Jennifer White, 2012

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China Labour Bulletin by Aris Chan, 2009

Migrants and migrations du monde Simon Gildas, 2008

Children’s influence on family dynamics C. Crouter and Alan Booth, 2003

Learning Text by Heart and Language Education : the Chinese Experience Xia Yu, Foreign Language School & S.W Univ. of Political Science and Law, 2013

Experiences of forced labour among Chinese migrant workers Carolyn Kagan, Sandy Lo, Lisa Mok, Rebecca Lawthom, Sylvia Sham, Mark Greenwood and Sue Baines, 2011

Handbook of asian education Yong Zhao, 2010

China on the move. Migration, the State and the Household Cindy Fan, 2007 The movement of people, goods and ideas over four millennia Diana Lary, published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 2011 The Education of Migrant Children and China’s Future. The Urban left behind Holly H. Ming, 2013 Internal labor migration in China. Trends, geographical distribution and policies. Kam Wing Chan, University of Washington, 2008

The age of migration in China Zai Liang, 2001 China’s education development and policy Zhang Xiulan, 1978-2008 Rural Labour Migration in China : Challenges for Policies Zhan Shaohua, 2005 La scolarisation des enfants de travailleurs migrants en China Zhao Changxing. Experice, Sciences de l’éducation. Université Paris 8, 2007

Les idées maitresses de la culture chinoise Liang Shuming, 2010

F I L M O GRA PHY

Rights-base approach to the Educational Experience of Migrant Children in China Lin Jin, Masters of Art and Developments Studies, 2012 Social Change and the Urban-Rural divide in China Martin King Whyte, 1999

Last Train Home directed by Lixin Fan, produced by Daniel Cross and Mila Aung-Thwin, 2009.

Present and Future of the Chinese Labour Market M. Bruni and Claudio Tabacchi, Centro di Analisi delle Politiche Pubbliche, 2011

The voice of China’s workers Leslie Chang, TED talks, 2012

Education in China Qiang Zha, 2013

Thalassa France 3, 11/04/2014

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WEB OGR APH Y

www.about.com http://geography.about.com/od/chinamaps/fl/Chinas-Hukou-System.htm Ping Zhou, China’s Hukou System, about.com, 2014, consulted in June 2014 chineseculture.about.com Introduction to School and Education in China, consulted on September 2014 www.cfr.org About China’s Internal Migrants, consulted on 02/10/2014 europe.chinadaily.com.cn China Daily Europe, Migrants feel pain of separation, by Fan Feifei and He Dan, January 17th 2014, consulted on september 2014 www.chinaeducenter.com China Educational Centre, Consulted in September 2014 chinalaborwatch.org/home.aspx China Labor Watch, consulted in september 2014 chinaperspectives.org http://chinaperspectives.revues.org/456, Migrant Worker in Shanghai, Laurence Roulleau-Berger and Shi Lu, 2005, consulted in June 2014

www.ibtimes.com http://www.ibtimes.com/china-now-has-more-260-million-migrant-workers-whoseaverage-monthly-salary-2290-yuan-37409-1281559, Sophie Song on the International Business Times in 2013, consulted on 13/11/14 www.independent.co.uk The Independent, China’s Left Behind Children : it’s not what you think, article by Nyima Pratten, written on October, 7th 2012, consulted on August 2014 www.iom.int International Organisation for Migration, consulted on 14/062014 www.ilo.org Website of International Labour Organisation, about the labour migrations in China, consulted on 23/09/2014 www.lemonde.fr http://www.lemonde.fr/asie-pacifique/article/2010/03/04/la-presse-chinoisereclame-la-fin-du-passeport-interieur_1314353_3216.html La presse chinoise réclame la fin du passeport intérieur, Le Monde, 2010, consulted in September 2014 www.migrationpolicy.org Migration Policy Institute, consulted on 26/10/2014

www.clb.org.hk, China Labour Bulletin www.cnn.com http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/02/world/asia/china-elderly-law/ CNN World article, the new Chinese law about the visit of elderly people, 2013. Consulted in April 2014

www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2010/09/THIREAU/19638 Les cahiers de doléances du peuple chinois, Le Monde diplomatique, 08/07/2014

www.embraceni.org Why do people migrate?, consulted on May 2014

www.nwccw.gov.cn/html/35/category-catid-135.html National Working Comitee on Children and Women under the state council, consulted in September 2014. steppingstoneschina.net Stepping Stone China, consulted many time since June 2014

hir.harvard.edu/archives/3205 Harvard International Review, January 2014, Consulted in October 2014

www.unicef.cn UNICEF, consulted on June 2014

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AP P EN DI CES

#12. Woman and her child Around Xinzha Lu / Streets of Shanghai / September 2014 Personal Picture

These notes refer to certain images used in my Dissertation. Here are the references.

#13. Girl in a school of migrants The Library project / Shanghai / June 2014 Personal Picture

#1. Girl in a school of migrants The Library project / Shanghai / June 2014 Personal Picture

#14. Woman preparing a chicken Zhujiajio / October 2014 Personal Picture

#2. Through the windows of a corridor Summer Palace / Beijing / December 2014 Personal Picture

#15. Girl in a school of migrants The Library project / Shanghai / June 2014 Personal Picture

#3. Life in Lilongs Shanghai / December 2013 Personal Picture

#16/17. Painting on a wall Around Xia Nan Men / Shanghai / February 2014 Personal Pictural

#4. Pair of shoes drying Zhujiajio / October 2014 Personal Picture

#18. Train Station Shanghai / 2014 /Personal Picture

#5. Exhibition about the sustainable development UFR des langues Etrangères Appliquées Université Lille III / Roubaix Credit ADDAC / December, 17 2013

#19. Children doing homeworks Streets of Shanghai / September 2014 Personal Picture #2O. Girl in a school of migrants The Library project / Shanghai / June 2014 Personal Picture

#6. Men sitting in a street South Morning China post Photo Reuteurs #7. Workroom, women sewing Around Xia Nan Men / Shanghai / February 2014 Personal Pictural

#21. A boy plays a homemade wooden car Liuzhou City / Guangxi Autonomous Region / Jan. 22, 2012 English.sina.com #22. Packages on a delivery tricycle Streets of Shanghai / Decembre 2013 Personal Picture

#8. Girl in a school of migrants The Library project / Shanghai / June 2014 Personal Picture

#23. Streets in Shanghai November 2014 / Personal Picture

#9. Workers in a construction plant Getty image

#24. Altruism and open-mindedness in public Beijing 2014 / Personal picture

#10. A Worker sinodefenceforum.com / 2012

#25. Woman in a train On my way to Zhangjiajie / May 2014 Personal Picture

#11. People playing in a street Beijing / 2014 / Personal Picture 128

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Thank you for reading my dissertation.

Renaud Dardaine, China Studio 2013/2015

This dissertation has been written as a part of my End Studies Projet. It concludes my two years of Masterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s degree in Shanghai.

Renaud Dardaine