A Study On The Citizenization Of Migrant Workers In Northwestern Cities

Contemporary China is in a period of dramatically accelerated social transition. The opening-up reform, while liberating the peasants, has enhanced their consciousness of and enthusiasm towards production. However, the limitations caused by our urban-rural binary social structure and that of household registration system make the issue of migrant workers a big problem and common concern in academia and politics.The emerge of migrant workers on the surface seems to be contributed by the household registration system based on the urban-rural binary opposition. It, however, can be linked with structure limits in a deeper sense. The long-term urban-rural household registration system has prohibited the normal migration both between cities and between cities and rural areas, hindering a large population from gathering towards cities, which has led to the continuous lower level of our urbanization and its disassociation with industrialization. The lower urbanization level in turn resulted in the great potential of our surplus rural labor rushing into cities, hence the issue of migrant workers.Since the new century, in order to break away from the urban-rural binary structure, decrease the regional development imbalance and reduce uneven distribution of wealth, our country has presented the "four approaches":promoting coordinated regional development, integrating urban and rural development, adhering to the new industrialization, informationalization, agricultural modernization and new urbanization. In the process of promoting the new urbanization, orderly transferring of the citizenization of the agricultural population has become an important problem and a reality confronting us during our current social transition.This study mainly takes the field study of LZ as an example. A huge number of migrant workers are put in a two-dimensional vision where they are faced with a special pulsating wave process of the globalization of world modernity and rapid transition of our local community. This study examines the process of migrant workers’"growth of modernity" and the obtaining of their consciousness of citizenship, as a part of the social body. It also examines how migrant workers, the state, market and the citizens grow in constant interaction, how they participate in cities’ public life to get their rights as citizens and develop their own civility. In this study, the theory of social operation school is the main line. This research confronts the basic fact that China is under social transition, analyzes the historical background and realistic basis for the development of Chinese society with the Social Transformation Theory, explores the mutual-construction and covariant relationship, the mutual-construction subject, the mutual-construction time and space, and the interaction effect of the social actors, i.e. individual migrant workers, the state, citizens, etc. in the process of migrant workers’ citizenization with the theoretical basis of social mutual-construction. This dissertation also explores the logics of migrant workers’"growth of modernity" under the "structural changes of social practice".This study assumes that the transformation of social structure has contributed to the split and transformation inside the migrant-worker group, the co-existence of migrant workers of older and younger generations. However, the various differences between these two groups unable the citizenization of migrant workers to be an overnight process. Neither can it be completed simultaneously. Compared with the older group, migrant workers of younger generation have stronger will and ability of citizenization. The older and younger generations have sequential differences in education level, the attachment to land, the motives of working away from home, the anticipation for their future, etc. In the forwarding process of the new urbanization, it is very likely that migrant workers’ citizenization needs to be accomplished with the co-efforts among sequences. This type of citizenization through sequences is thus referred to as the sequential citizenization of migrant workers. The transformation from peasants to citizens is a particular phase in the process of modernization, an important component of the integral modernization. However, our country is a agriculture-dominated developing country, where lie some much-too-great differences between the east and west parts, and the social development has been extremely imbalanced. Though in the promotion process of new urbanization, our country’s development strategy has turned towards the west part, the development in the east part is still eminently more rapid. The ecological, environmental and regional differences have prohibited the citizenization of migrant workers from being simultaneously accomplished in the whole nation.Influenced by the time-and-sequence mode in the modernization process, migrant w orkers’ citizenization is impossible to be wholly completed in a certain period of time. R esembling modernization, migrant workers’ citizenization will contain certain differentia1and sequential characteristics. Therefore, it is reasonable to specify their citizenization according to the extent of their differences, considering priorly the regions capable of fin ancial support for the citizenization of migrant workers. Or, to put in another way, firstly a central city should be regarded as a starting point for their citizenization, and then grad ually from hither to thither it can be widely spread and completed. This type of citizeniza tion with different time periods is the differential and sequential citizenization of migrant workers.In the process of the rapid dual transitions of both the contemporary world society a nd the contemporary Chinese society, the citizenization of migrant workers is the mutual-construction co-variant relationship among migrant workers, the state, the market and al so other social actors. They shape each other. Along with the transition of Chinese societ y from the old modernity to the new modernity, individual migrant workers are also und ergoing the same transition. In other words, migrant workers’ citizenization is the proces s of their’constant growth of modernity’. In this accumulative process of their individual’ constant growth of modernity’, their individual independence and autonomy gradually in crease, are expressed and also become embedded in their inner mind. Thus their civility are fostered and their citizenization accomplished.