Research On The Problems Of Floating Population’s Political Participation

Floating population is a kind of special social group accompanied by the process of reform and opening up. They actively promote the industrialization and urbanization in China, and at the same time they have great impacts on the local governments’public administration and public infrastructure services. On the one hand, floating population leaves away from their outflow place so that they are unable to fully enjoy the deserved rights conferred by their outflow place. On the other hand, floating population can not gain the same rights and benefits to the resident population of the inflow place so that they are always on a marginalized status, since they are subject to the household registration system and the associated factors such as employment, education, social security, and so on. Political participation is an effective means to protect the legitimate rights and interests of floating population as well as a necessary requirement for the democratization of political management and a realistic demand for maintaining social stability and building a harmonious society. However, until now it has not fully played its due role. With the accelerated expansion of the scale of floating population, the contradiction in managing floating population becomes more and more prominent. How to improve and perfect the political participation system so as to ensure the full exercise of floating population’s political rights is becoming an extraordinarily meaningful research work for the floating population problem.This paper treats the floating population in Nanan as the analysis object. Based on the existing theories of political participation at home and abroad and some survey data, this paper analyzes the current situation of floating population’s political participation. Moreover, it compares floating population’s willingness to participate political activities according to their differences in age, education level and income respectively, compares the current situation of political participation of floating population and household population according to their differences in household register, showing the real status quo of political participation of the floating population in Nanan. Besides, based on the obtained survey data this paper does in-depth analysis of the problem of floating population’s political participation and the cause for that problem. Finally, on that basis, it gives some advice on reforming the urban household registration system, improving the relevant participation system and environment, and enhancing the depth and breath of floating population’s political participation, so as to provide a reference for future research on floating population’s political participation.