Internal migration and family dynamics

While population migration has been surging in China since 1990, little attention is paid to the impact of migration on children’s educational wellbeing. In this paper we analyze the micro-data of Chinese population censuses in 1990 and 2000 and mini-census in 2005. We match the school-age children (6-15) to their parents’ background information within the same households, and examine how parents’ migration status and family living arrangements affect children’s school enrollment status. We also compare migrants’ children to their peers in both origin and destination counties/districts. Results show that migration status per se has no clear impact on school enrollments since 1990; however, migrant children of rural status face disadvantages in educational opportunities in 2000 and 2005. Mother’s migration and living with relatives other than parents and grandparents have negative impact on children’s enrollment status. The distance and timing of migration also affect children’s enrollment status.

Immigrants and displaced persons generally experience drastic changes in their living environment. This is manifested in their necessity of moving from their rural living environment to a high rise apartment building in the city. Such changes were found to have a profound impact on families and on the community. Objectives of this study were to understand the implications of forced transfer of a community to a different ecological environment, and assess the effects of such an environmental change on the community's sociological structure and on restructuring people’s cultural identity. Igelhart used cultural shifts to describe cultural changes. In the Kfar Darom community, changes noticed in the ecological environment had caused significant changes in the community's social structure, as well as restructuring people's personal, family, communal, religious and ideological identities. Thus collective characteristics that once united and strengthened a community's social structure had dwindled, while individualistic characteristics that weaken and disintegrate the social structure of a community became stronger. Insight derived in this study was based on in depth interviews with evacuees and with officials who were in touch with the community before and after evacuation.