Peasant Worker's Urbanism And The Factors Exerting Influence On It

The research of peasant workers bears important theoretical and practical importance. In recent years, the issue of peasant workers has attracted close attention among the academic circles. In sociology, several major perspectives known as social problem perspective, social resource perspective, social network perspective and social transformation perspective emerged respectively. Social transformation perspective, in no doubt, is the most popular in the last decade in social sciences, esp., in sociology. This article, in general, is a positive research starting from social transformation perspective, paying attention to the dynamic development of the peasant worker group, considering the operationality of the conclusion. In my opinion, for the peasant worker group as a whole, this is an uneven historical process from peasant to urbanization, citizenship and urbanism. The subject of this article is how the peasant worker group undergoes the transformation smoothly in the dramatically changing modern Chinese society, e.g., how they transform into urban dwellers.There are two key hypotheses in the frame of research: first, are the ordinary factors (urbanness, the social demographic characteristics) influencing urbanism also influence the achievement of urbanism of the peasant workers, and second, in the special social historical and institutional background in present China, will the migration experience of the peasant workers exert influence in the achievement of urbanism. The dependent variables (urbanism) include the pattern of social bonds, deviance, social psychological well-being, the sense of alienation, tolerance; and independent variables include urbanness (the population size of the city where they migrate), social and demographic characteristics and the experience of migration. The data in the present study is from the project"The peasant worker in the process of urbanization"sponsored by the China National Fund for Philosophy and Social Sciences 2005 (05&ZD034) and supervised by Prof. Cai He. This survey was conducted in 9 cities in the Pearl River Delta Region in Guangdong Province in June and July in 2006 and 3086 valid questionnaire was collected. The respondents are peasant workers working in enterprises. Two kinds of statistical models, multiple linear regression model and logistic regression model are employed in this study.The study shows that, in general, the social relationship pattern of peasant workers is mainly primary and primordial secondary social relationships formed in hometown, supplemented by secondary social relationships formed in city. In social relationship, the peasant workers show more urbanism than their rural counterparts, but still behave more as rural people. The social relationship pattern of the peasant workers resulted from their rational choice based on the adaptation to urban life, work and environment. As to deviance, alienation, social psychology well-being, there are no serious problems among the peasant workers.The size of the population in the area where they migrate has significant influence on the majority of urbanism indicators, including the eight variables as relative, classmate, country fellow, workmate, supervisor, the degree of alienation, fine by inspector and different opinion and the result varies litter when the factor of social demographical characteristics is controlled, which proved the influence of the size of the population in the area where they migrate on urbanism existed independently. Therefore, it can be used to explain urbanism as an independent variable and is a principle one on influencing the urbanism of the peasant workers.The social demographic factors have significant influence on all the indicators measuring urbanism and the result varies little when the variable of urbanness is controlled, which demonstrates the effect of social demographic factors on urbanism existed independently. Therefore, social demographic factors can be used to illustrate urbanism as a series of independent variables and is another key factor influencing the urbanism of the peasant workers. Relatively speaking, age, sex, education and the locality of the household registration are the more obvious variables effecting urbanism among social demographic factors.The accumulation of urban experience is a key factor of urbanism which has significant influence on a majority of index of urbanism. The long the peasant workers work and live in urban area, the more urbanism they possess. The acquirement of urbanism is a qualitatively cumulative process which can not be achieved merely by offering the peasant workers urban household registration and social security in urban area, by carrying out the mechanical migration from rural to urban areas.The contributions of this thesis are:a. this is an empirical test of the three theories of urbanism first done in mainland China;b. based on related researches, this article discussed in depth the hot and important topics, such as, the choice of the path of urbanization in China, the issue of peasant workers born after 1980, the migration intention of the peasant workers, the occupational loyalty of peasant workers, the stability of peasant workers in certain regions, the training of peasant workers, the reform of land system in rural areas, the political participation of peasant workers , analyzed the issue of peasant workers in terms of political policies and put forward related opinions and suggestions.c. this article is beginning to break through in the study of the effect of social migration on urbanism.d."the law of invariablenes on primary social relationship"and"the law of growth on secondary social relationship and social network resource"were raised which enriched the theories of urbanism.e. the hypothesis of"fair and highly efficient peasant worker administration mechanism"was proposed.