Chinese Migrant Workers: Right Attainment Deficits, Rights Consciousness and Personal Strategies

Dagong as a way of life gives rise to many abuses and rights violation against China’s 200 million migrant workers. Pushed to the limits, many have taken part in protest actions to seek redress and assert their rights. Pick up any newspapers or magazines in and outside China, such stories are legion. Indeed the plight of migrant workers is well known. The litany of woes include arduous work with low pay, long work hours, wage defaults, unsafe work settings, denial of labor contracts, exclusion from public health care, social insurance and social assistance, poor educational chances for their children, exorbitant fees and fines, and discrimination from urban residents and officials. The world financial tsunami spotlights domestic and overseas attention on this group yet again. Since late 2008, 20 million migrant workers are said to have lost their jobs, with more unemployment still to come. Idle people running short of money are prone to cause trouble. The Chinese government now faces the challenge of finding jobs for returnees to the countryside and people who take off to the cities again after their annual family holiday. Increase in crime and social disorder has been reported. Also noted is the rise in collective protests actions. This paper analyzes the intricate issues of rights deprivation, rights consciousness and personal strategies of Chinese migrant workers with the research findings from a large sample survey completed at the end of 2005. The data confirms the occurrence of many types of rights abuses, significant levels of rights consciousness, and preference for legal and institutionalized means for rights defense besides the use of private resources. Furthermore, the findings reveal that the experience of discrimination, consciousness of rights, and choice of personal strategies are affected by personal backgrounds like age, gender, education, and occupational status before migration. The role of these factors suggests that migrant workers are far from being a homogenous group. Cohort differences will have implications for policy. In the discussion part, the paper enters into the on-going debate about “rights consciousness” versus “rules consciousness” in contentious Chinese politics inspired by Elizabeth Perry and others. From the perspective of migrant workers themselves, a distinction between the pursuit for rules and the quest for rights is not possible. What is clear is that migrants spontaneously to the notion of rights. Both their subjective perceptions and action preferences reveal the strong influence of rights consciousness as well as demands to uphold rules of the game. Hence, the notion of rights is a powerful tool of expression for China’s new working class