Education for population control: Migrant children’s education under new policies in Beijing

Abstract

China's economic success in the past decades has been partly fueled by the unprecedentedly large-scale internal migration of the rural labor force to urban areas. The rapid development in urban areas is paralleled by a large population living in poverty-stricken rural areas. The low return to agricultural production drives rural men and women to leave their villages and seek jobs in cities. In the meantime, the booming urban economy, especially in Beijing, Shanghai, and other coastal cities, has been in dire need of cheap labor for their manufacturing, construction, and many other low-end service industries. Both forces “push and pull” millions of rural peasants to work in cities, making this unprecedented phenomenon of internal migration in China.