ABSTRACT
Since the early 1980s, when China implemented economic reforms and opened its doors to the outside world, internal migration from rural to urban areas and from the western and central regions of the country to the eastern coastal region has been continuous. The floating population, predominantly migrant workers, has increased sharply from 30 million in the early 1980s to 225.42 million by 2008. This scale of internal migration is unprecedented. 1
