ABSTRACT
With the advent of the open-door economic reforms two decades ago, China has experienced a prolonged period of rapid growth. While this has resulted in its per capita income increasing by more than 12 times, an unpleasant by-product is the socioeconomic consequences of mangliu (‘peasant flood’), or illegal internal migration, which has arisen from regionally unbalanced development and the shift in the surplus of labor from agricultural to industrial sectors.1 In attempt to stem this tide the Chinese government has adopted a hukou system (i.e., a household registration system), which limits legal migration by legislating an individual’s location choices.2 Despite this, the presence of significant economic incentives for locating urban employment, has led to a flood of illegal migrants who have moved into major industrial cities, such as Shanghai and Shenzhen. For instance, based on the retrospective questions in China's 1990 census (conducted by the State Statistical Bureau) it has been estimated that over 20 million legal migrants, during the 5-year period from 1985 to 1990, located themselves in Guangdong, Beijing and Shanghai.3 Among all non-hukou migrants over this period, more than 75 percent have been from rural areas, almost two-thirds between age 20 and 39, almost 60 percent relocating for job-related reasons, only less than 12 percent with senior high school education, and approximately two-thirds working in retail, hotel/restaurant service, and manufacturing industries.
