Self-identification Of Migrant Workers

Since the1980s, a large number of surplus rural labors moved to the city, and later developed into a unique group in China’s modernization construction, migrant workers. According to the statistics bulletin from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, in2010, the total number of farmer workers is242,230,000, among which the number of migrant workers is15,3350,000. As a group whose number increases year by year, they travel to and from between the urban and rural, the population is large and widely distributed, and it has become the lasting focus of the government and society.Migrant workers do a lot of hard, tiring and dirty manual work after getting into the city, they contribute to urban economic development, but are excluded from the urban systems and culture, so it’s difficult for them to identify with the city from the heart. Meanwhile, when there are huge differences between rural life and urban life, after experience the city life and change a lot in many aspects of the life habits, it’s hard for the migrant workers to fully accept the past rural life, especially when there is economic profit, they no longer wish to go back to the rural, and their identification with the rural also reduce. This paper attempts to study the conditions that the migrant workers are neither identified with the city, nor identify with the rural, under the background of social transformation,The paper is divided into four sections. The first section is the introduction, introducing where the research questions come from, research meaning, methods, concepts and the review of related researches.The second section introduces the identity status of migrant workers to the rural and city. On one hand, their experience and economic interests in the city make it difficult for them to well get used to the rural life; on the other hand, the exclusion of city system, employment and other aspects make it difficult for them to integrate into the urban lives. This situation makes them hover on the edge of urban and rural.The third section analyzes the factors that affect the migrant workers’ self-identity, from the aspects of the migrant workers themselves factor, rural factor, urban factor, and system factor. Though the urban factor includes the urban system rejection, the system factor is still listed separately in the paper, particularly analyzing the background of China’s household registration system and its practical needs in the current real life.The fourth section summarizes the status of migrant workers as marginal man according to their self-identity condition, and puts forward some countermeasures, in which the key is to reform the household registration system, and also discusses the future research.