China has been undergoing profound social
and economic changes. Accompanying these is
an increase in the rate of population mobility.
The household registration system is still in
force, however, and acts as an important
regulator of population movement, but this
basically applies to a segment of population
which is formally attached to the state sector.
Against this is the country‘s growing floating
population, which is guided in the main by
the availability of economic opportunities. We
may term migrants in the de jure sense
‘permanent migrants’ and migrants only in the
de facto sense ‘temporary migrants’. The
constraints they face and the opportunities
open to them are very much different from
each other. While the latter are found mostly
in the more prosperous regions of the country,
the former tend to have a more even
geographical spread. Lagging areas, as well as
the more economically advanced regions, can
be important destinations. This paper reports
the findings of a field survey conducted in
Dongguan and Meizhou, two cities in
Guangdong Province with contrasting
economic characteristics. The data clearly
demonstrate that the permanent migrants and
the temporary migrants belong to two very
different segments of the population. Striking
similarities are revealed for the permanent
migrants in very different settings. However,
there are signs that even in this tightly
controlled sector, economics will soon take
precedence over politics as the main driving
force underlying migration.