ABSTRACT
China’s rural-to-urban migration and rapid urbanization have produced profound impacts on Chinese cities. The pace of urbanization has accelerated since China joined the WTO in 2001 and became the ‘world factory’. In 2011, China reached a remarkable milestone: more than half of its population became an urban population living in cities. Not only has the population of rural migrants in urban China increased but their composition has also changed over time. Mobility is essentially the way of life for the migrant population, which brings risks to migrant workers. Migrants experience hard lives in the city. Their social integration with the host society is becoming a burning issue in China. The notion of trans-locality leads to the need to understand better the social networks of migrants.
