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From Rural Poverty to Urban Deprivation? The Plight of Chinese Rural-Urban Migrants Through the Lens of Last Train Home

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Abstract

China’s impressive growth has been accompanied by huge rural-urban divide and social sacrifice of many including rural-urban migrants. Reflecting on the documentary Last Train Home (2009) by Lixin Fan, this paper identifies and examines the life of rural-urban migrants in China in terms of poverty-reduction, child-care, education and equal opportunities for a better life. By comparing the seemingly difficult and tragic life of the Zhang family against statistical facts, it shows that their suffering and struggles are common to most migrants. In essence, by creating an interactive dialogue between the film and the economic reality in China, this paper highlights the severe constraints on the Chinese peasantry and discusses the implications of limited choices and social injustice towards rural-urban migrants. It argues that the inequality in opportunities and the lack of social care for migrants has created huge social cleavage that not only reduces social welfare but may also impede further development.

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Notes

  1. However, this paper does not intend to make a detailed review of the large literature on rural poverty and rural-urban migration in China.

  2. Zhang’s family is one of them.

  3. The All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF) is a mass organization dedicated to the advancement of Chinese women of all ethnic groups in all walks of life. The basic functions of the federation are to represent and safeguard the rights and interests of women and promote equality between men and women. ACWF has a Department of Children (because Children were considered as a main factor in women’s welfare), who frequently conduct research concerning rural left-behind Children.

  4. It is noted that educational expenditure is dependent on rural households’ income [17], and the lack of sufficient finance has led to a decline of the provision of education for many rural citizens [20].

  5. It should be noted that rural agriculture tax and fees were abolished in 2006 and tuition fees have been gradually reduced (or abolished in some areas) since 2008. However there may still be incidental costs to attendance at school which may be important.

  6. The UK, for example, has allowed permanent residency to be gained after legally working for 5 years, or lawful residence for 10 years. A full citizenship may be granted one year after the grant of permanent residency.

  7. In one of the scenes in the film, a frustrated man shows his anger towards a soldier who is enforcing law and order in the railway station. He is angry that the soldier stopped him but what really separates him are the barriers he cannot see. They are imprisoned by the macro policies that are invisible and much more difficult to escape. It is those invisible institutional barriers, not the physical barriers before them leave them in frustration.

  8. It should be noted that there have also been some improvements at the macro level in the past few years. Since 2008, the central government has started to introduce a basic health care (new rural co-operative medical scheme, which covers 40 per cent of cost for in-patient) and a basic pension scheme for all rural residents. A recent small scale field study in Shaanxi province conducted by the authors in 2011 shows, that the abolition of agricultural tax, subsidies in rural education, the introduction of basic healthcare and a pension scheme, along with the increase in wages, has given rural residents and migrants a sense of improvement and appreciation.

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Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank the editor of this journal, the two anonymous referees, James St. Andre, Jenifer Piesse, Nicholas Weaver and Yangwen Zheng for useful comments and suggestions, Shuge Wang for her help with some of the data collection. Xiaobing Wang thanks the Centre for Chinese Studies Research Fund for financial support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Chinese Studies, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK

    Na Li & Wei-Hsin Lin

  2. Economics, School of Social Sciences and Centre for Chinese Studies, The University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK

    Xiaobing Wang

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  1. Na Li
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  2. Wei-Hsin Lin
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  3. Xiaobing Wang
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Correspondence to Xiaobing Wang.

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Li, N., Lin, WH. & Wang, X. From Rural Poverty to Urban Deprivation? The Plight of Chinese Rural-Urban Migrants Through the Lens of Last Train Home . East Asia 29, 173–186 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12140-012-9175-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12140-012-9175-2

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