The Surge of migrant labor: Internal migration and the hukou system in the People’s Republic of China

Abstract

For the last three decades, Chinas has been considered the “factory of the world”. The sheer size of the Chinese population has made possible the continuous supply of cheap labor into the industries of the more economically developed zones, such as the Pearl River Delta. The main reason China is capable of providing so much low or medium-skilled labor who work for meager wages is that most of its workforce consists of migrant workers, who leave the small plots of land in their rural villages in search of job opportunities in more developed areas. Once they leave their hometowns, these workers lose most of their rights and lack access to basic services in their places of destination such as public healthcare or public education for their children. At the heart of this form of institutional discrimination is the household registration or hukou system.