A Research On The Adaptability Of The Peasant Workers To City Life

Since the mid 1980s, large numbers of extra physical laborers in rural China have moved from countryside to work in the cities or to work in the village and township enterprises. These peasant workers make up what we called "farmers1 frenzied hunt for work in cities". When the peasant workers move from their rural hometown to the cities, the changes are not only in the case of geography. What really count are the changes of their thinking method, psychological tendency and the systems in which they live. So, these changes we mentioned above are really the process of the peasant workers adaptation to the changes of their environment. The research on the adaptability of the peasant workers is not only a key point in the study of "farmers' frenzied hunt for work in cities" but also very significant for the realization of urbanization and modernization in our country.This thesis tries to show the conditions of today's peasant workers and the differences among themselves from the perspective of peasant workers' urbanization, or so-called continued-socialization, and their adaptation to city life. It can be divided into four parts.The first part introduces the relating researches both at home and abroad, their research goals, research contents, research methods, and the basic condition of the samples.The second part analyzes the peasant workers' adaptation to urban life from three aspects: economically, socially and psychologically.Most of the peasant workers can only get humble jobs and have to live in shabby places. These conditions make it difficult for them to get along with the citizens. When they find that they just can't be absorbed in the city life, they certainly can not have a sense of belonging and can not have an urban value system. So it is not harsh to say that the adaptability of Chinese peasant workers is in a very low level.The third part focuses on the analysis of differences between the peasantworkers' adaptation to the city life and differences between the difficulties they met during this process. In this part, the author analyzes the question from five perspectives. The first is about the difference between various peasant workers. The second is about the difference between the male peasant workers and their female counterparts. Thirdly, it is about the difference between the peasant workers from different family background. Fourthly, it is about the difference between the different migrant generations. Finally, it is about the difference between the peasant workers of different groups.The last part, based on what has discussed above, summarizes the characteristics of peasant workers in China and those factors which influence them. Besides, it also provides some suggestions on how to help the peasant workers to become urbanized and be absorbed in the city life.