VOL 89 NO. 2 CHINAS RURAL MIGRATION a dualistic society may make the Chinese rural hai about 40 percent of those who found jobs migrants'experience different from that of during the last ten years ) These jobs are ne other developing societies(Kam Wing Chan, doubt generally in better occupations with 1997; Dorothy J. Solinger, 1999). The old di- higher pay and better benefits. Even for the visions that separated rural and urban Chinese increasingly larger number of urban residents geographically in the past are now replaced by who find their own jobs or who rely on friends barriers that segregate them economically and or relatives for finding a job( who account fo socially within cities. These include two types over a third of new hires in Shanghai now) of hukou(type of household registration) the advantage over rural migrants in getting tatus, different labor-market entry processes better jobs has not diminished. This is so not which are partly based on one's residential only because urban job-seekers are better ed- cupations, housing, medical care, and pension ated within the urban social and cultural benefits contexts. Urban youth do not look lik e coun- The dual hukou system, which underwent try bumpkins, and more importantly, the so- some drastic changes in the past decade, has cial networks they rely on to get jobs are not lost its importance in Chinese cities. a distinctively different from those of rural mi- nonagricultural hukou was made available for grants. In addition, in light of the current un- certain rural populations, but it was mostly employment levels for urban workers, various only available in small towns, not cities city governments have also started to formu- ( Wang, 1997). In more desirable places such late and to implement explicit regulations that as medium and large cities, open sale of hukou prevent migrants from taking certain jobs. In was generally not allowed. Under a few cir- Beijing, according to a report from the Beijing cumstances where it is possible to obtain an Daily (10 April 1997), at the same time when urban hukou in a large city, the price is often certain professions have been opened to mi exorbitantly high. In Shanghai, for instance, grants, the Labor Bureau of one of its city dis- the" blue-sealed''hukou(official Shanghai tricts also stipulated that at least 35 types of carries a price tag of 200,000 U.S. dollars for ployers are also required to pay a per capita foreign investors, or 1 million yuan for do- fee for each migrant they hire, to be used as mestic investors. Such a number is well be- an unemployment fund for urban workers yond the reach of most rural migrants, as this At the same time that they are welcomed as price is equivalent to 150 times an ordinary laborers, rural migrants simply have not been rural migrant's annual income. Moreover, given a legal living space in cities. ith a few with no chance of sharing the existing free extreme exceptions, they can neither build nor public housing and employment benefits, buy. Their housing is therefore mostly primi- those who obtained urban hukou soon realize tive and temporary. Consequently, rural mi that what they have paid for is largely a piece grants see little possibility of normal family of useless paper. Having an urban hukou alone life in cities. Not only do rural migros hey is not of much use. In order to live and work have a legitimate permanent living space, in cities and to have all the urban benefits of also do not have any claim to basic services current residents one needs other resources as such as health care and education for their hildren A significant proportion of urban residents Most rural migrants, therefore, ride the still get some assistance from government in- waves of circular migration, reminiscent of itutions to enter the labor market(in Shang- that from developing to developed countries Indeed, Chinese labor migration has been compared squarely with undocumented Me Wuding Wang et al. (1995) for the regulati ican migration to the United States. As sum marized by Kenneth D. Roberts(1997), the mean annual income for rural migrants in Shang- two processes are highly similar in five re- 995 is only about 6, 600 yuan. pects: the process is predominantly circular