Social Exclusion And Life Adaptation

The problem of urban inclusion of the peasant workers is an important social problem during the period of Chinese social transformation. This paper tries to analyze this problem from the angle of the interaction between social exclusion and life adaptation. Concretely speaking, this paper uses the methods of literature study and field study to analyze the following questions: What social exclusion do the peasant workers face in the cities? What are the internal mechanisms of the social exclusion? What actions and tactics do they use to deal with the social exclusion and adapt themselves to city life? What is the actuality and future of lives of the peasant workers in the cities? How to avoid social exclusion of the peasant workers?The whole thesis consists of five parts. Part one is the introduction. It consists of the advance of the question, the summary of literature, the frame of the theory and the research methods. The writer thinks that the existing researches' analyses of the process of the peasant workers' urban inclusion have one problem, that is, the cleavage of macroscopy and microcosmic, or action and structure. Some of them lean to consider the process of urban inclusion as the process of the peasant workers' study and adaptation, but ignore the macroscopical background of the process of the microcosmic adaptation. Some of them lean to stress the structural factors' restriction on the process of urban inclusion, but ignore the peasant workers' action of adaptation on the background of structural restriction. Thus, from the angle of the interaction between structure and action, this thesis not only analyzes the structural exclusion on the peasant workers, but also analyzes the actions and tactics which the peasant workers use to deal with the exclusion. The author wants to reveal the internal rule of the urban inclusion process of the peasant workers by this way.In second part, the writer analyzes social exclusion of the peasant workers in the cities from eight aspects of economy, polity, culture, social network, social security, education, space and urban administrant system. These aspects of social exclusion do not remain unchangeable. Since the peasant workers began to enter into the cities in the 1980s, the social exclusion of the peasant workers has changed while the institutional and social background has changed.Part three is concerning about the internal mechanisms of the social exclusion. The author contends that the social exclusion of the peasant workers is influenced by institutional mechanism, group mechanism, market mechanism and the peasant workers' ability of adaptation mechanism. The social exclusion of the peasant workers is mainly an institutional exclusion, and roots in the urban and rural dualistic structure which bases on the HuJi system.The writer discusses the peasant workers' adaptation tactics which are to deal with the social exclusion. The author contends that the peasant workers are not completely passive when they face the social exclusion. As positive actors, they exert their active ability continually and use various tactics flexibly to adapt to the urban life. Concretely speaking, the peasant workers have two main kinds of adaptation tactics: the first tactic is using and accumulating various resources such as human capital, social capital and economic capital actively;the second tactic is dealing with the institutions and rules of the urban society flexibly, and it consists of creating and alternative, survival resisting, escaping and no appeal. By using these tactics, the peasant workers open up the survival space for themselves continually, and also impel the change of the social structure.The last part is a brief summary and analysis. In conclusion, the writer contends that many factors such as the exclusive institutions and market environment, limited personal resources have restricted the rate and degree of the process of the peasant workers'urban inclusion, but on the same time, the urban inclusion is made possible by the flexibility of the institutions, the change of the institutions, relatively open market, and the existing personal resources. Facing the structural social exclusion, they exert their active ability continually, and use and accumulate various resources actively, and use various tactics flexibly to deal with the institutions. These actions and tactics of them not only improve the living condition of themselves, but also motivate the collapse and change of the exclusive institutions. Thus, in a word, the process of the peasant workers'urban inclusion is also a process of the interaction between behavior adaptation and structure change. In the end of the text, the author analyzes the actuality and future of the peasant workers' urban inclusion, and how to avoid social exclusion, and etc.