China's massive and history-making flow of rural to urban migration has captivated scholarly attention for the last two decades. So far most research efforts have been devoted mainly to the study of patterns of migration flows and how migrants fare in the places of destination. Although this approach is justifiable in the initial stage of studying China's migration flows, it is time to examine how rural-urban migration has contributed to social and economic transformations of rural China. The question is critically important because recent trend of return migration and flow of enormous amount of remittances have the potential to contribute to rural development and create a new order of social stratification in rural China.
The research will examine the impact of migration/return migration on rural China in several aspects. The PI will study patterns and determinants of return migration; examine determinants and consequences of remittances (either sent back by migrants or brought back by return migrants; and determine winners and losers in the race to compete for non-farm employment and entrepreneurial activities. The investigator will consider not only individual level characteristics (i.e. human capital, political capital, migration experiences, and household composition) but also the characteristics of migrants-sending communities.
The study relies primarily on two sources of data: the 2000 Chinese Population Census and the 2002 China Rural Household Survey. For individual level models, the PI will use OLS (ordinary least squares) regression and logistic regression techniques. To assess the impact of community level factors on return migration, remittances, non-farm employment, and entrepreneurial activities, we use multi-level modeling techniques. The quantitative data analysis will be complemented by interviews with selected return migrant entrepreneurs in one migrant-sending community.
The project promises to contribute to the scholarly literature in several aspects. First, the project will fill a major gap in the current scholarly literature by providing the most systematic empirical knowledge on return migration/migration and its impact on rural China. Second, a theoretical innovation lies in the fact that the research considers migration as an important factor in social stratification in rural China. Third, the project is the first attempt to model the impact of migration on development in a multilevel modeling framework using perhaps the most important country of migration for empirical application. Fourth, the project also has implications for policy-making because of the potential role of remittances in poverty alleviation in the poor areas. Finally, by giving graduate students the opportunity to participate in this project, both for data analysis and fieldwork in China, the project helps train the next generation of scholars on international demography and comparative sociology.
