China’s Immigrant Workers Political Participation:Institutional Environment, Current State,and The Ways Of Realization

Political participation associates closely with political development, which is onecharacteristic of the political modernization and democratization. Political participationof peasant-workers has a huge impact on the stability of the state and the harmony ofthe society. Now, there are more than200million peasant-workers in our country andthe number of this group has increased with the process of our country’s reform andopening to the outside world. Not only is the historical process of their moving to workin cities one of their income growth and expanding their outlook, but also is one ofimproving their political rights and broadening channels of their articulation of interests.As a new emerging social stratum, peasant-workers are the tremendous driving forcebehind the development of our economy and the mainstay of prosperity and progress ofurban and rural areas. Their influence on China’s public life, however, is far from beingenough, representing the unbalanced development between economic power andpolitical power. The political resources they shares are fairly scarce, their politicalappeals cannot become public issues timely and effectively, and more often their interestappeals are only expressed by the action with the character of perform, showing thedisadvantaged of this group. In fact, the lack of political discourse is one of the reasonsresulting in the imbalance between peasant-workers’ pay and reward in economic life;thus, the so-called economic influence also is limited and negatively advances oureconomy, without boosting their own welfare. When it comes to political participation,the peasant-worker group, actually being excluded, has been separated from the politicallife for a long time, which hinders the guarantee of peasant-workers’ political rights,improvement of their economic life, China’s political system reform, and advancementof political civilization. Modern politics pursues realizing the even equality of rights andjustice of distributive interests in the community. From the perspective of social members, a peasant-worker participates equally and effectively in political life, which isnot only an effective way to improve and enhance the economic life, but also conformsand respects his own deserved political status and citizenship. In terms of the nation,having ignored the political rights and interests of a social group for a long time, notsuitable for the basic value of modern political philosophy, is not free from assumingthe unnecessary political risk in reality. If more than200million peasant-workersshowed the collective aphasia in the political field, there would be no doubt that theformation of social order is faced with potentially threat. It is not uncommon that thereare many orderly political participation channels; however, the rate of thepeasant-workers political participation is not high. On the contrary, the cases ofnon-institutionalized participation that banned by the Party and the government policiesand regulations emerge endlessly.The institutional environment of peasant-workers’ political participationdetermines the basic line of that. Democracy rights for them, development of politicalparticipation and the system environment are linked tightly. In China, participatingsystems, including China’s National People’s Congress, Political Consultation System,Public Hearing System, Letters and Calls System, and Community LevelSelf-Governance System, not suitable for the real process of peasant-workers’ politicalparticipation, has the system defects. In the process of society that centered oneconomic development, the improvement of the economic environment, as well as theboost of the economic development, is always the same and permanent theme of thegovernment. No matter how peasant-workers participate in the politics, so long as theydon’t have impact on the social stable and political order, without creating the massincidents, the government don’t take care of these issues of the democracy andlegislation. Even though there are some constitutions and platform having been built inmacroscopic field for peasant workers’ political participation, our country fails to makethe most of them express their interest demands freely and equally in this environment.Generally speaking, the phenomenon of citizens’ politics participation is notoptimistic in our country. If not associated with own interests, the enthusiasm andinitiative of political participation are low, which is deteriorated by the fact that the rateof this group’s liquidity is high and their incomes and living environment is not stable.Far from taking part in the public life, as an individual, a peasant worker is so negligiblethat he doesn’t have the chance, even is isolated by the political exclusion and keeps silence. All in all, regardless of the effects that the peasant-workers participate inpolitics and whether they hold fast on the chances or not, institutional environmententitles them with the legislative ways to take part in the process of politics, namelyelection, vote, involvement of local opinion. At the same time, besides the legislativeways, cases of radical form for political participation, such as strikes and threats ofsuicide, are often happening, which has caused great repercussions in society.The survey result shows that as for the political knowledge and the politicalattitude, the migrant workers lack of enough basic knowledge of international anddomestic politics, which means they lack of basic political literacy training and skilltraining platform. At the same time, the migrant workers do not have specific valuecognition for their articipation in the political activities. Their political concern hasmixed characteristics: their self-efficacy of political participation is relatively lowmeanwhile the level of political trust for the party（CCP） and the government is higher.All these are the key to study and generate strategy for the migrant workers’ politicalparticipation. The election is one of the important ways for political participation ofmigrant workers. The survey result also shows that the election political participationof migrant workers has the double marginality of both outflow and inflow.The right tovote and to be elected of the group lose invisibly, no matter what is the real reason tonot to participate in the election: no chance, no qualifications, no time, no economicstrength, no interests. The social consensus is difficult to be effectively. In the numberedpolitical participation behaviors, the features of utilitarian, imbalance of politicalparticipation and not high political participation is obvious. This shows that thepromoting power and the resistance of political participation come from the interestdriven, economic condition their own quality and so on.The contact between migrant workers and rural social is very difficult to beblocked, although the migrant and resident migrant workers are different, they are allthe same in political rights and political expression. Silence is not real weakness. Thechannels of the design of the system of environmental for migrant workers politicalparticipation is blocked, besides in real life they need interest expression and strongdemand to affect the policy process and results. This dislocation between their demandof political participation and institutional supply has resulted in the situation that themigrant workers are seeking a way out outside the system. In the age of the Internet,many migrant workers are good at making use of the more and more complete information resources to safeguard their legitimate rights and interests by using Scott’s"weapons of the weak". What they use more is to express their interest demands in theform of non institutionalization, and to influence the process of policy. Even though"Weapons of the weak" is weak, it is in a form of slight resistance of a society orspecific populations. In the increasing class conflict of interest in the social life, it canbe met the eye everywhere that the rights of migrant workers suffered serious damage,and it is an obvious example that frequently occurring affect social stability of themigrant workers group events. The non institutionalized political participation ofmigrant workers is also easily related to and mutual penetrated of illegal crime violence,and this puts forward a new challenge to the political stability and social integration.The development and forms of participation of political participation of migrantworkers are generally restricted by the economy, political, cultural and socialdevelopment level of the state and the specific conditions." Generally, the factorsaffecting the political participation can be induced into economic development, politicalculture, social environment, political system, citizen individual behavior preference andso on." In the30years since reform and opening up, under the background of thedeepening of socialist market economy, the migrant workers are not only importantparticipants in economic activities, but also in the political field.At the same time,along with the overall cultural level of China’s migrant workers continuing to improve,especially the emergence of new generation migrant workers, they have aconsiderable understanding of the functions of various government departments andpublic policy formulation process and have a clear understanding of their own rightsand obligations of citizens in national policy making in the status.The migrant workersenhance the consciousness of maintaining their self-interest.Whether the vulnerablegroups whose main body migrant workers can have effective participation in public life,becomes an important index to measure the degree and the level of democracy inmodern society.On the whole, with the development of China’s social and politicaleconomy, the political participation of migrant workers has entered a new period ofdevelopment, and there is a possibility and system arrangement. The system, the degreeof organization system, the cost of participation, the quality of participation main bodyand the government behavior have had a significant impact on the direction of thepolitical participation of migrant workers.Migrant workers can participate political participation through various forms. By doing this they can have an impact on government policy process, have the expressionand desire of political rights, reduce government policy failures and make thegovernment’s whole process meet the "general will". This helps to maintain the politicalprocess lawful and orderly. Specifically, on the one hand, it is conducive to therealization of social stability and harmony and the protection of civil rights. On theother hand, it can enhance the political quality of migrant workers, can promote China’spolitical development, can promote China’s public decision-making process democraticand legitimate and can promote our country to solve three rural problems and promotethe process of ruling the country according to the law.There are many factors affecting the political participation of migrant workers, andif you want to solve the problem effectively. You can do these things: Firstly,we shouldset up spirit of the citizen standard, and should solve the problem of social integrationand political participation of the migrant workers in institutional arrangements. Onlywhen the migrant workers are into the city society, the political participation problem ofthem has the possibility space to be solution. Secondly what we should do is to reformand innovate the political participation mechanism of migrant workers, and toexpand the channels of participation. In the meantime, the government should makegreat efforts to cultivate the healthy development of out migrant workers organizations,and the migrant workers should improve the skills of self-organization，in order toachieve the deliberative democracy in the public area of society in the meanwhile tostrengthen the quality education of migrant workers, such as cultural education, legaleducation, political skill education, democratic consciousness education etc. In order toenhance the political accomplishment and the capability political participation ofmigrant workers.