Analysis On The Capability Of Migrant Workers' In China

"Migrant workers" (nong-min gong) is a special phenomenon during the transformation of China's economic system and social society. "Migrant workers" (nong-min gong) refers to workers who has an agricultural household, but work in the non-agricultural sector, taking wage as the main income recourse."Capability" is a concept in the economic ethics; it refers to the alternative combinations of functioning those are feasible for him/her to achieve. Capability is thus a kind of freedom: the substantive freedom to achieve alternative functioning combinations. The functioning mentioned here includes employment, education and public participation, etc. This article, we aim to analyze migrants' capability based on the perspective of economic ethics.In Chapterâ… , introduction has been presented. We make some study on the definitions related to our topic; literature review has also been given in this part. For theories, economic ethics is still on the starting point in China. Comprehensive standpoint has not been formed at present. Researchers in that field focus on the theoretical analysis, rather than the practical issues. It is a new and challengeable attempt to apply theories in economic ethics to analysis such a practical issue as "nong-min gong". For the practical aspect, we make some summaries of domestic scholars' researches in recent years and find that they raised different points of view towards certain issues, lacking of the unified ethical ground. Therefore, we aim at finding the ethical ground towards the issues of "nong-min gong", arousing attentions from the public. That is the original intention of our study.In Chapterâ…¡,we make a brief review of the reality and historical policy evolution of the issues of "nong-min gong". After the examining of relevant data, we find that migrant workers have become into an important constituent of the labor force in China, playing an influential role in the process of modernization. However, many rights of theirs have been ignored. They have not been treated equally as other urban citizens. Though tracing of the policy evolution on this issue, we find out that government pay more and more attention to this issue, trying to solve this problem with a more practical and open attitude.Chapterâ…¢is the main part. We make an analysis on migrant workers' capability from four aspects, which are the fair employment, the medical insurance, the professional training and the public participation. We do some empirical analysis based on the data collected by the questionnaires in Shenzhen and Dongguan. We get the results as followed: first of all, in a more developed market, the influence of labor market segmentation will become smaller; the return of human capital investment will be bigger. The consummation of market mechanism will be helpful to realize migrant workers' fair employment. Second, migrant workers are in the "crevice" among three divided medical insurance system. The coverage rate of them is low. It is still a long way to go to realize the equality in health. Third, the proportion of migrate workers who have taken professional training is lower than that of local workers. The majority of migrant workers are engaged in simple jobs with low skills. Both the employers and migrant workers lack of the inclination to make the human resource investment. It will be harmful for the accumulation of migrant workers' own human capital, as well as the long-term development of the economy. Finally, migrant workers have a very low public participation rate. What's more, the cognition degree and trust condition for the civil organization is very low. NGOs may play a more active role in dealing with the issues of domestic migration, if they get more support from government and public.In Chapterâ…£, Some policy implications have been given. The government should make some institutional innovation, though that, a unified and open labor market will be found and migrant workers' rights of fair employment will be ensured. An effective medical system covering all the citizens should be build as soon as possible to realize the equality of health for migrate workers. The government must offer more guidance and services for migrant workers, encouraging them to take in part in the professional training. The government should give more supports to the Non-governmental organizations (NGO), letting them having more develop autonomy and getting involved in the provision of services for the migrant workers. Meanwhile, domestic NGOs should improve them selves by learning experience from other countries in order to make themselves more qualified. That will offer another platform for migrant workers to get evolved in the public decision -making.Economic ethics is a new topic in the realm of modern economics; it is still on the starting point in China. This article makes a new attempt to analysis issues of migrant workers based on the perspective of economic ethics. We have done some surveys using the questionnaires, and make some empirical and quantitative analysis based on the data we collected, avoiding the stereotyped qualitative analysis. That is also an innovation for this article.