ABSTRACT
The term "floating population" refers to a special kind of migrants defined by the hukou system in China, who stay in a place without a permanent residence registration. The places of destination usually are city areas, especially metropolises such as Shanghai, Guangzhou and Beijing, while the sending areas cover the countryside broadly, especially the provinces of Sichuan, Hunan, Anhui and Henan. This chapter focuses on Dorothy Solinger's categories, namely the attitudes of the receiving community. The survey area was Caoyang Xincun of Putuo District, including most of Caoyang community and some of Cao'an community. Migration often raises acute political questions of social integration and the distribution of scarce resources, and the movement of large numbers of "outsiders" into Shanghai is clearly no exception. The chapter then presents the urban social conditions brought about by the relaxation of controls on population mobility, and to future research projects to inquire further into its course and consequences.
