ABSTRACT
Informal migration refers to the long-term seasonal rural-to-urban migration facilitated by the labor economy. The resultant “floating population” (also known as rural migrant workers) has been classified as an urban population by certain criteria. 1 This massive crowd of people has retained their rural hukou (official entitlement of peasantry identity in China’s household registration system), yet no longer do farm work or reside in their rural communities. Instead, these individuals have migrated to urban areas, where they live without the official urban hukou that would entitle them to equal social welfare and public service benefits, and thus, are recognized as the Third Population. 2
The booming informal migration in the post-reform era, especially since the 1990s, is neither a continuation of the migration inertia present in the planned economy before the reform, nor is it similar to the migration patterns experienced during urbanization and economic development in a Western context. The persistent existence of the “floating population” has resulted in distinct de facto implications for China’s nominal urbanization rate that differs markedly from Western countries. Thus, discretion should be utilized when examining previous research, as urbanization trends in the West may not be analogous to China’s experience, and statistical analyses of population trends may not account for all of the factors influencing China’s growth phenomenon.
