ABSTRACT
Since 1978, China’s economic reforms have led to dramatic changes in Chinese society, and as a result two important social phenomena have emerged: massive rural–urban migration movements and status mobility between social classes. These two phenomena reflect profound changes in China’s social structure, including the emergence of some new social groups and classes, of which migrant workers – a continuously growing group – are the most important. The frequent mobility, unstable living conditions and uncertain social identities of the migrant worker group have continued to shock the existing social structures and institutional arrangements, and have contributed to dramatic social changes in urban and rural areas. Meanwhile, the rural–urban immigrant movements have accompanied changes in people’s social status, and changes in the social stratification arrangement have transformed the original social mobility patterns. This, then, has created new opportunities for upward social mobility and at the same time produced new social obstacles excluding some people from the channels of status promotion.
