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The Poverty of China's Rural-To-Urban Migrants : = A Case Study of Shanghai.

Record Type:	Language materials, manuscript : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	The Poverty of China's Rural-To-Urban Migrants :/
Reminder of title:	A Case Study of Shanghai.
Author:	Gao, Chunyuan.
Description:	1 online resource (323 pages)
Notes:	Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 85-06, Section: A.
Contained By:	Dissertations Abstracts International85-06A.
Subject:	Happiness. -
Online resource:	click for full text (PQDT)
ISBN:	9798381020977

The Poverty of China's Rural-To-Urban Migrants : = A Case Study of Shanghai.
Gao, Chunyuan.

The Poverty of China's Rural-To-Urban Migrants :A Case Study of Shanghai. - 1 online resource (323 pages)

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 85-06, Section: A.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Australian National University (Australia), 2023.

Includes bibliographical references

China's rural-to-urban migration has attracted a great deal of research attention since the late 1980s, but migrant poverty has not been properly understood. Previous studies have mostly regarded China's rural-to-urban migrants as a disadvantaged or marginalised group in the city. However, despite showing obvious signs of poverty, such as poor living and working conditions, they have rarely been viewed as subjects for poverty research. A limited number of studies have blamed rural migrant poverty on their low incomes. However, the income of rural-to-urban migrants has been steadily increasing in recent decades. This increase can be seen in official data sources. Both my quantitative and qualitative data also indicate that rural-to-urban migrants, on average, have decent incomes.This thesis thus sets out to resolve a paradox: Why do China's rural-to-urban migrants live in poverty despite having relatively high incomes? To resolve this puzzle, I develop a new framework of multidimensional poverty to advance a holistic and sophisticated theoretical understanding of poverty. I define poverty as the multidimensional deprivation of material needs, non-material needs, individual capabilities and social capabilities. I apply this definition to an analysis of poverty among China's rural-to-urban migrants, providing an alternative to the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index developed by the University of Oxford and the United Nations.Employing this framework, and using quantitative analysis, I find that the majority of rural-to-urban migrants in Shanghai suffer from multidimensional poverty. Indeed, the multidimensional poverty rate of migrant households is higher than that of households who receive dibao (a minimum livelihood guarantee payment) and are officially regarded as the poorest people in the city. This is despite the fact that the average per capita income of migrant households is significantly higher than that of dibao households. Through qualitative study, I find, furthermore, that the higher the income rural migrants have, the more severe the multidimensional poverty in which they live in the city. The remainder of the thesis seeks to explain this seemingly perverse finding.Drawing on fieldwork in Shanghai and rural Anhui, I argue that rural debt, resulting from high marriage costs and, to a lesser extent, natural disasters and the abuse of power, leads to a cross-generational poverty trap for rural migrants. Underpinning this poverty trap, I argue, lies a pursuit of family prosperity and happiness in rural China, which is embedded in a cultural emphasis on the importance of individual sacrifices for the family. This familial institution, which I explain in terms of the Chinese concept of xingfu(family-based happiness), significantly shapes rural migrants' choices and norms regarding employment, marriage, and their lives in the city, with complex effects on cross-generational rural family prosperity and poverty. On the one hand, this familial institution can explain why many individual rural-to-urban migrants become trapped in poverty during their time in the city. On the other hand, in the long term, this institution sustains the possibility for a rural family to climb out of poverty through permanent migration to the city, via either apartment purchase or educational success.

Electronic reproduction.
Ann Arbor, Mich. :
ProQuest,
2024

Mode of access: World Wide Web

ISBN: 9798381020977Subjects--Topical Terms:

557938
Happiness.
Index Terms--Genre/Form:

554714
Electronic books.

The Poverty of China's Rural-To-Urban Migrants : = A Case Study of Shanghai.
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520 $a China's rural-to-urban migration has attracted a great deal of research attention since the late 1980s, but migrant poverty has not been properly understood. Previous studies have mostly regarded China's rural-to-urban migrants as a disadvantaged or marginalised group in the city. However, despite showing obvious signs of poverty, such as poor living and working conditions, they have rarely been viewed as subjects for poverty research. A limited number of studies have blamed rural migrant poverty on their low incomes. However, the income of rural-to-urban migrants has been steadily increasing in recent decades. This increase can be seen in official data sources. Both my quantitative and qualitative data also indicate that rural-to-urban migrants, on average, have decent incomes.This thesis thus sets out to resolve a paradox: Why do China's rural-to-urban migrants live in poverty despite having relatively high incomes? To resolve this puzzle, I develop a new framework of multidimensional poverty to advance a holistic and sophisticated theoretical understanding of poverty. I define poverty as the multidimensional deprivation of material needs, non-material needs, individual capabilities and social capabilities. I apply this definition to an analysis of poverty among China's rural-to-urban migrants, providing an alternative to the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index developed by the University of Oxford and the United Nations.Employing this framework, and using quantitative analysis, I find that the majority of rural-to-urban migrants in Shanghai suffer from multidimensional poverty. Indeed, the multidimensional poverty rate of migrant households is higher than that of households who receive dibao (a minimum livelihood guarantee payment) and are officially regarded as the poorest people in the city. This is despite the fact that the average per capita income of migrant households is significantly higher than that of dibao households. Through qualitative study, I find, furthermore, that the higher the income rural migrants have, the more severe the multidimensional poverty in which they live in the city. The remainder of the thesis seeks to explain this seemingly perverse finding.Drawing on fieldwork in Shanghai and rural Anhui, I argue that rural debt, resulting from high marriage costs and, to a lesser extent, natural disasters and the abuse of power, leads to a cross-generational poverty trap for rural migrants. Underpinning this poverty trap, I argue, lies a pursuit of family prosperity and happiness in rural China, which is embedded in a cultural emphasis on the importance of individual sacrifices for the family. This familial institution, which I explain in terms of the Chinese concept of xingfu(family-based happiness), significantly shapes rural migrants' choices and norms regarding employment, marriage, and their lives in the city, with complex effects on cross-generational rural family prosperity and poverty. On the one hand, this familial institution can explain why many individual rural-to-urban migrants become trapped in poverty during their time in the city. On the other hand, in the long term, this institution sustains the possibility for a rural family to climb out of poverty through permanent migration to the city, via either apartment purchase or educational success.
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