The third type of exclusion is legal exclusion. In China, it consists of using hukou to enforce legal boundaries such as preventing rural migrants from transferring their hukou from rural to urban. Historically, the function of hukou was to legally prevent rural farmers from moving to urban areas so that sufficient goods were produced to fuel cities. With the reform of the 80s, millions of rural migrants moved to cities for work. The trend still continues, as the percentage of migrant workers leaving their home for more than 6 months increased from 114 million in 2003 to 145 million in 2009.6 The fact that they cannot change their hukou prevents them from accessing the same social benefits and government jobs that urban citizens are entitled to. For example, rural children without urban hukou cannot receive the same degree of education from public schools; hence, they have to pay an additional fee.7
A significant amount of rural children who are not adjusted to urban setting, or whose parents cannot afford to support them, find themselves growing up without their parents.8 An estimation of 23 to 60 million children under 14 are in this situation.9 While many are under the care of grandparents, some have argued that these left-behind children are prone to psychological illnesses due to the failure to reintegrate into rural community or a lack of interaction with parents.10 Hence, besides denying access to social benefits, hukou has created the left-behind child phenomenon.
To confront the issues caused by hukou, the central government has decentralised its responsibility for hukou reform to local governments; hence there are variations in methods of addressing hukou issues.
8886. F., Cai. “Hukou System Reform and Unification of Rural-urban Social Welfare.” China & World Economy, 19(3), 2011.
8887. S., Zhan. “What determines migrant workers’ life chances in contemporary china? hukou, social exclusion, and the market.” Modern China, 37(3), 2011.
8888. Z., Liang & Y. P. Chen. “The educational consequences of migration for children in china.” Social Science Research, 36(1), 2007.
8889. S., Ma. “China's "left behind" children often suffer health consequences.” Canadian Medical Association.Journal, 182(16), E731-2, 2010.
8810. Z., Liu & F. Zhu. “China's returned migrant children: Experiences of separation and adaptation.” The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 12(5), 2011.
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