China's "Tidal Wave" of Migrant Labor: What Can We Learn from Mexican Undocumented Migration to the United States? Author(s): Kenneth D. Roberts Source: International Migration Review, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Summer, 1997), pp. 249-293 Published by: The Center for Migration Studies of New York, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2547220 Accessed: 05/10/2010 15:49 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cmigrations. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Center for Migration Studies of New York, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to International Migration Review. http://www.jstor.org Chinds "Tidal Wave" Labor: ojMigrant What Can We Learn From Mexican Undocumented to the Migration United States? Kenneth D. Roberts Southwestern University The purpose of this article is to place Chinese labor migration from agriculture within the context of the literature on labor mobility in developing countries by comparing it to undocumented Mexican migra? tion to the United States. The similarities fall within three general areas: the migration process, the economic and social position of migrants at their destination, and the agrarian structure ana process of agricultural development that has perpetuated circular migration. The last section of the article draws upon these similarities, as well as differences between the two countries, to generate predictions concerning the development of labor migration in China. A fifteen-car train arrived in Shanghai from the city of Fuyang in Anhui Province on February14. On board were 2,850 laborersfrom outside the municipality, signaling the beginning of the spring labor influx. Of this group, most were between 20 and 30 years of age, and more than half had never left their home villages before. Most will stay in Shanghai, while others will head to Hangzhou, Wenzhou, Ningbo, and Changshou to seek work The Shanghai Public Security Department alreadyhas prepareda number of vehicles to transportlaborers to other places outside the city, and the Shanghaipolice have strengthened their forces to keep public order. (FBIS, 1994d) One of the positive aspects of China's socialist development period is that it avoided uncontrolled urbanization and its attendant problems, so visible in the cities of many developing countries. While this outcome was based upon a tightly woven and highly effective system that had restricted population mobility since the mid-1950s, it was hoped that the surge in rural prosperity of the early 1980s, the success of rural industry in the mid-1980s, and the policy of encouraging the development of small and medium-sized cities could together represent a unique model of development "with Chinese charac- xAn earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meetings of the Population Association of America in San Francisco on April 6-8, 1995, and revised for the International Conference on the Flow of Rural Labor in China, held in Beijing June 25-27, 1996. I would like to thank the Brown Foundation for its generous support, and Alice and Sidney Goldstein, Dan Hilliard, Steven McGurk, Ina Rosenthal-Urey, Dorothy Solinger, and an anonymous reviewer for their valuable comments. ?1997 by the Centerfor MigrationStudies of New York.All rightsreserved. 0197-9183/97/3102.0118 IMR Volume 31 Number 2 (Summer 1997): 0249-0293 249 250 International Migration Review teristics . that ensures that our peasants will never repeat the experience of those farmers who during the early stage of capitalism flooded into the cities after going bankrupt" (Fei, 1986:209). Yet, as the above quote from the Chinese press indicates, China is experi? encing a "tidal wave of rural migrant labor" {mingongchao) to its cities. It began in the early 1980s with the loosening of the constraints that had prevented rural Chinese from living in the cities, increased each year until the 1989 economic austerity program reduced urban job opportunities, and picked up with renewed intensity in 1991. Since then, it has grown to an estimated 80 million laborers, making it the largest flow of migrant labor in history. Impossible to ignore in the large cities of China, the phenomenon has grabbed the attention of the foreign press: Newsweek (December 26, 1995) ran an article on Chinas "Nightmare Cities," The Washington /W(October 9,1994) called the phenomenon "The Dragon Within," and the Daily Telegraph (February 24, 1995), in a seerriingly gleeful expression of irony, noted, "forty-five years ago, the Communist stormed into the cities.... Now, they are under siege themselves as - Chinas creaky urban infrastructure and its no less vulnerable social and political order ? start to buckle under the strain of the massive rural influx." While more circumspect, the Chinese press has alternated between expressions of extreme concern and assurances that not only do the benefits provided by rural migrants outweigh their costs, but that new measures are being implemented to better control migration flows. What has been missing in many of these discussions is a context within which to place Chinese migration, with outsiders generally iden? tifying it with the type of rural-urban migrations accompanying the transforma? tions of rural life that occurred throughout Europe or in the American South, and Chinese rarely looking beyond their own borders or immediate experience for parallels from which lessons could be drawn. The purpose of this article is to provide this context for Chinese labor migration by comparing it to undocumented Mexican migration to the United States. Why, of the many types and examples of labor mobility in the developing world, choose this unique case for comparison? There are five bases upon which the validity of the comparison rests. The first, applicable to migration in many developing ? countries, is that the process is predominantly circular, not permanent migrants regularly return to their villages and retain their ties to the land as part of a strategy of spatial and sectoral diversification of household labor. The second is the existence of a very large gap in the wages and standards of living between sending and receiving areas. The large cities of China are relatively as developed (and as foreign) to a Chinese peasant as is the United States to a Mexican migrant worker. The third is that there are restrictions preventing settlement of labor migrants in both Chinese cities and in the United States, ranging from complex systems of work and residence permits to outright illegality. The capriciousness of enforce? ment of these regulations creates an ambiguous status for migrants: their labor is China's Migrant Labor and Mexican Undocumented to the U.S. 251 desired but their presence is not, particularly when it is perceived to impinge upon the privileges of residents. Together, these three factors make the Chinese case more like international labor migration between developing and devel? oped countries than internal migration within developing countries, a similar- ity that has been noted by several scholars (Bonnin and Carrier, 1988; Chan, 1996; Solinger, 1995a). The fourth and fifth similarities make Mexico-U.S. migration a particularly appropriate case for comparison. The fourth is that the proximity between sending and receiving areas allows the process to be spontaneous, not organized as are most labor migrations between developing and developed countries. The fifth concerns the conditions that create surplus labor in agriculture while maintaining migrants' links to the land. Both Mexico and China experienced agrarian-based revolutions that gave land to the peasants that could not be rented or sold. Despite this history, government policy in both has consistently favored the cities at the expense of the peasants, keeping agricultural prices low and subsidizing urban consumption. I will suggest that these and other structural similarities are important in conditioning the response of peasants to agricultural change and to circular migration having emerged as an impor? tant component of the survival strategies of rural households. The example of undocumented migration from Mexico is appealing for two additional reasons. The first is that it was, until the Chinese case, "the largest sustained flow of migrant workers in the contemporary world" (Massey et al.<> 1994:705). Because of this and its direct implications for U.S. immigration policy, it has received a great deal of scholarly attention and generated a large body of literature. The second is that the process is now over three decades old and has matured considerably over its course, so that its long-term dynamics can be explored. After brief descriptions of the magnitude and proximate causes of the upsurge in labor mobility in China, this article explores the similarities and differences between Chinese and Mexican labor migration with regard to the type of agricultural development that has created and perpetuated circular migration, the migration process, including household strategies and networks, and the economic and social position of migrants in their destinations.