小圆百合本子:migrant workers

The new generation of migrant workers, born in the 1980s and 1990s, and who have higher educational levels and more skills than their parents, will become the lifeblood of the industrial workforce during the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) period. Shanghai is home to 4 million migrant workers, who account for one-fifth of the city's population. About 40 percent of the municipality's migrant workers have academic certificates higher than senior high school. "Unlike their fathers and grandfathers, who toiled in China's southeastern coastal cities to support families back in the rural inland areas, this post-80s generation has been swarming the urban markets in hopes of settling down and winning social recognition," said Fang Yuping, of Yangpu district's labor union, which promotes and organizes migrant worker training. The number of people living in the cities is set to double by 2050, leading to a level of urbanization unprecedented in human history. More than 400 million people from the countryside will be relocated to cities or see their hometowns urbanized in the next 15 years. The urbanization push is intended to sustain rapid economic growth, the government has said. "As (migrant workers) have become an integral part of cities, we should accept them and provide them with better opportunities for self-fulfillment," Fang said. He also noted that as China's rural-urban integration will speed up during the period of the 12th Five-Year Plan, migrant workers will find cities to be lands of equal opportunities. "Progress has been quite obvious in recent years," Yang said. "For example, migrant workers' children can now be admitted to publicly funded schools, which used to be the exclusive privilege of local students. And more migrant workers are now covered by social security, although the institutions serving urban and rural populations are still separate." Wang Bifu, one of Yang's colleagues from Suqian, Jiangsu province, said China's urban-rural integration will mean a better future for its vast rural areas. "I may return to my hometown in the future, because I believe there will be more opportunities for us to start our own businesses," he said.   （实习编辑：顾萍）
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China's migrant laborers are mostly farmers from the countryside looking for jobs in the cities. They power the country's fast-growing economy by working as construction and factory workers, restaurant staff, domestic servants and drivers.The huge group faces various problems such as a lack of workplace injury compensation, health care and schooling for their children, in addition to pay arrears. In today's program we'll take a look at China's migrant laborers and find out what the country has done to help them and their families. Here Zhong Qiu.In the beginning, it had just been another job for Geng Shijing, who has been a migrant worker on Beijing's construction sites for 15 years. A three month job on a construction site in a suburb of Beijing. “Back then, we were not paid on a monthly basis. Rather, we just got two or three hundred yuan each month and were told wages would be paid in full after the construction was finished. ”But when the job was done, he and his 63 fellows got a bad shock. They had been hired by a subcontractor, but instead of paying their wages, once the work was finished, he sneaked away with their earnings. Left stranded, Geng Shijing and his peers went to the Beijing Legal Aid Office for Migrant Workers to look for help. The Legal aid station is a mostly government funded project to provide legal services to migrant workers.Shi Fumao was the lawyer taking the case of Geng. With his help, Geng Shijing and his friends finally got their money back. Shi says since the office was set up in 2005 they have taken care of 2,500 cases and helped more than 4000 migrant workers, like Geng Shijing whose legal rights were violated.  “Before the new Labor Contract Law came into effect early this year, most employers denied migrant workers legally stipulated contracts. More than 80 percent of our clients used to work without a contract or even a record of employment. It made it even more difficult to collect legal evidence for court cases. ”         The Labor Contract Law increased the costs for employers who violated the law by not offering Migrant workers a proper contract. Migrant workers who leave their rural lands for urban employment have become a normal phenomenon in China which raises concerns of policy makers and sociology academics. With its number reaching up to 200 million, migrant rural workers have become a pillar of China’s work force and made a considerable contribution to the country’s economic growth. However, with less education, they are also a vulnerable group who have more difficulties realizing their legal rights to employment, medical care, pension and education of their children. “The government has made favorable policies and sufficient laws to protect the rights of the migrants. But in practice, we still have many difficulties to overcome. I must say many employers risk penalties to cheat and violate the law. On the other hand, the migrant workers are not capable enough to protect themselves by means of the law. For some victims who have no knowledge of law, they even resorted to violence. ”To improve legal awareness among migrant workers, Shi Fumao and his colleagues also launched law awareness campaigns among migrant workers and distributed brochures encouraging them to seek legal aid to protect their rights. With rapid urbanization, migrant workers have become inseparable part of the city. The average age of this group is becoming lower and many migrant children are brought up in the cities and feel strange to the farming land. However this group of people is living in a dilemma: they are not countryside residents nor city residents. He Ping is director of the National Institute of Social Insurance under the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security. He says the fundamental solution is to help the migrant workers to settle down in the cities.    “There needs to be directing policies to help the migrant workers to settle down in the cities. It requires stable employment which the New Labor Contract Law has enforced. On the other hand, the government shall offer more training chances to help migrant workers improve technical skills. So they can meet the needs of industrial development and find a better employment situation. In the long run, it is also a sustainable way of fostering the social security system for this group as they become a real part of the city.”Till now, it’s been a difficult task for many of them to settle down in the cities. They often change jobs and sometimes are required to live in a place their employer offers them. Geng Shijing's wife and his ten year old daughter are living in his home village, where the child is studying in primary school.  “Back in my home village, the education is not as good as in the city. I’m trying to send my daughter to the public school of county level so she can access better education. I hope with more knowledge she can realize a better life than we do.”
Like Geng Shijing, many migrant parents hope their children can enjoy the same quality education as the urban children do. They bring their children along with them to the cities, with the hope of the child being close to both parents, and having easy access to better education for their children. However, the next generation of this migrant group, found the reality is not as promising as they expected.      
 
Huang He is an educationalist who has been working closely with rural school dropouts and migrant children for years. In Chinese cities, he says, there are 20 Million migrant children    “The facilities and faculties in the urban public schools are far from enough to meet the needs of the big group of migrant children. Today there are over 400 thousand migrant children in Beijing, however, the public schools in the city were originally planned for the permanent residents only. There was no either local fund allocation for the public education of those migrant children. ” The educational plight of the migrant children saw an increase of unlicensed schools in Beijing. When migrants could not get their children into public schools, they started running their own schools, although they had no more than a junior high school education themselves. As the problem became acute some college students and faculty members of education research gave their voluntary help. In 2001 Huang He with two postgraduates from Beijing Normal University established XingZhi School in Daxing District, where Beijing's largest migrant community lives. This private academy funded by loans and donations has become one of the most successful schools for migrant children. The headmaster, Huang He, has seen the growth of XingZhi from an unlicensed school to an authorized one which today has 60 teachers and over 1200 students.   “It takes time for the changes to take place. Originally the local government was reluctant to accept migrant children into their public schools. They thought the central government had funded compulsory education in rural areas so the migrant children should go back to their hometown for schooling. At that time our school was shut down for several times by the local government because it was unauthorized and illegal. ”Within the last few years, the Chinese government has paid increasing attention to issues of agriculture, the countryside and farmers, and improvement of migrant rural workers’ rights. Education of the migrant children became a priority on the government’s agenda. To Huang He, the turning point came, when Premier Wen Jiabao visited a migrant children's school in 2003.   “At the same time, the government also changed its policy towards private schools for migrant children giving support and supervision. It was in 2004 that XinZhi got the license from the Education Ministry and became the first authorized private school for migrant children.”Huang He says his school has got a government subsidy of 300 thousand Yuan, equivalent to about 45 000 US Dollars so far; and since September, the central and local governments started to allocate funds for regular subsidies to the migrant children who study in private schools. The migrant workers themselves need to pay 500 Yuan or 75 Dollars.As Huang He explains, however, private schools like XinZhi can only be a temporary solution. The key issue remains with the integration into public education. That's why he demands ceaseless efforts from the government, especially the local authorities.Kirsten Di Martino from UNICEF works on Child Rights in China. She says they are working with the Chinese government to improve the access of migrant children to public schools. A key problem is, that the local governments have difficulties to estimate the number of migrant children and therefore do not allocate enough funds to the schools. “We have established a registration system in Beijing. So we have better understanding of how many migrant children there are. We know that in Beijing there are 400 thousand migrant children of school age. Up to now, we have registered about 200 thousand children. This really helps us to know the information about those children, like where they are, what they are doing, and what their needs are. So the local government could be more effective by putting efficient recourses to ensure these children go to public schools and get health care.”At the moment a lot of migrant workers still prefer to leave their children at home. According to Kirsten Di Martino, there are nearly 60 million left-home children in China now, who live either with a single parent or their grandparents. “They miss their parents. They feel isolated in many cases and this leads to further isolation from their peers and communities. And it is a real risk in the long term to further exclude them from society as this can perpetuate their status of being poor people.”   12-year-old Xie Na used to be one of the left-home children. When her parents left their village in Henan for employment in the city of Beijing, Xie Na and her younger brother were left in care of their elderly grandma. Sadly, her younger brother drowned in an accident, and Xie Na’s mother decided to take her daughter with her. Now Xie Na is the monitor of the fifth grade in XinZhi School. She says she likes the school very much and wants to stay in Beijing as she grows up.
 
In XinZhi school, there is a wall to showcase creative graffiti by its students. On the wall, some students also leave their wishes for tomorrow. “I want to be a singer.””I want to be an air hostess.” “I want to be an artist.” These children hope for a future different from the migrant life of their parents