Poverty Culture: The Cycle Of Poverty

With the development of our country's market economy, a kind of special labor market appeared in bustling streets of cities: composing by immigrant workers that are from rural and without technology, taking the simple labor as survived tool. In the foundation of interviews on three street labor markets in Changchun, this article analyzes the subculture of this group, specified the poverty culture has spread from the countryside to urban, and it has extremely disadvantageous to the construction of our country's urbanization.The poverty culture is a kind of spontaneously cultural that taken by people lives in the poverty condition for a longtime in order to adapt impoverish, and is distinguishing to the values, behavior ways, psychological feeling of the mainstream culture. The unique behavior ways is the form of external manifestation; the unique value is essential core. Among the immigrant works in the street labor market, the unique behavior ways are the working pattern adapted to the sub-labor market, the life pattern maintaining food and clothing bottom line , the dress and living pattern formed the ownership feeling, the family pattern filling the sense of crisis, and the homogeneity and weak contact pattern. Moreover, poverty culture has already infiltrated in the impoverished population's deeply consciousness, changed their value. The unique value of this group are occupational view maintaining a basic standard of living, negative consumer attitudes, and incomprehensive achievement view .Once poverty culture formed ,the poverty is firmly caught by poverty cultural trap, and unable to extricate oneself. The poverty culture had own movement mechanism, limited people to change their lives, and trapped in the impoverished cycle.The poverty culture doesn't only limit impoverished population, but also restricts the reproduction of labor force. On the basis of interviews on immigrant workers in street labor market, the writer profoundly realized their contradictory psychology. They have two contradictory expectations on children's future, namely the ideal expectation and the reality expected are the opposite and coexists. Because living in the city for many years, they are apt to accept the upper-grade's value and behavior ways, and repose the expectation on their children. In fact, the immigrant workers also retain in original cultural pattern, and equate children's future to their own present situation. The contradictory psychology suddenly revealed the awkward circumstances that immigrant workers faced after they entered in the urban. The drop-out rate of the second-generation is higher than the national average, so the writer could not help taking anxiety about the education condition. In the modern society, education is one of important ways to mobile upward. Giving up education in essence was giving up the opportunity to mobile upward. The reason is neither parents'opposition nor the poor economic conditions, but is the choice made by their own. Obviously, the cultural of poverty has intergenerational transmission, and affected the labor force reproduction.The most serious hazard from poverty culture in city is that it has adverse effect to our country's urbanization construction. The urbanization is a way that must be taken for the modern society develops, and is a system project. The urbanization mainly refers to a transform process to the city society, including the urbanization of population and life style, namely rural population turn to urban dweller, as well as city lifestyle infiltrates to the whole society. In essence, the basic duty is to change farmer's social relations, status, values, social right, inhabitant quality as well as life style comprehensively to the urban dweller. But in our country, in influence of poverty culture, the immigrant works were still retaining the original life style. They are engaged in most painstakingly and the most tired work after enters in a city .The transform in industrial structure is not enough .As a result, the pace of industrialization lag to the urbanization. The urbanization developed into a castle in the air; The immigrant workers with poverty culture crowded to union department between city and countryside also gives challenge to the management in city, aggravates the burden; The urbanized construction needs generations endeavor, but the second-generations'realistic condition did not let us see the hope, and the continue urbanization turns into embarrassing position. Therefore, the immigrant workers with poverty culture is unable to melt into the life system in urban, has brought extremely disadvantageous influence on the urbanized development.Compared with the poverty culture in remote countryside, the poverty culture in city has new manifestations in the treatment of agriculture, education, birth and so on. Although it belongs to the poverty culture in essence, the culture can be changed and eliminated under certain conditions. Transforming impoverished value with the positive cultural form, strengthening the immigrant workers'qualities by education and eliminating institution barrier are helpful to alleviate the impoverished question. In brief, in order to eliminate this phenomenon, it needs to begin from the culture and the structure, depending on the conjunct effort of the government, society and the impoverished.