China’s family support system: challenges and solutions under the circumstances of rural-urban female labour migration

Based on interviews with rural-urban migrants in Anhui and Sichuan provinces of China, this paper focuses on the coping strategies adopted by Chinese rural-urban migrant families to deal with the tensions caused by changes in generational care chains.

The author argues that in the context of China’s transformation towards a market based economy, the dual role of rural women as breadwinners and main care givers, raises interesting questions about the impact of industrialisation upon agrarian societies. Women’s labour market participation is without exception linked to numerous issues of family responsibilities. There are conflicts between capitalist demands for the free movement of labour and traditional family care practices based on Confucian values. By illustrating how and why the traditional family support system managed to survive and function in the circumstance of women’s migration, a new pattern of generational contract is identified. Responding to lack of  support from the formal social security system, the migrating-mothers developed their own coping strategies. Dependent children and the elderly were left in the countryside; the grandparents, who have maintained partially their capacity to work were in charge of the grandchildren. The young migrating couples reciprocated by giving their parents financial support, other material help and promises of better support in the future.

Key concluding points include:

• in comparison to their urban counterparts, rural-urban migrant workers are more exposed to social security poverty. The female migrants and their families have no civil rights in cities and they are totally excluded from the surrounding urban society

• being excluded from the formal social security system has meant that migrants have to find new ways of dealing with the problem of support for dependent children and elderly parents

• considering the unwillingness of the government and the administrative incapacity of the state, it is impossible to expect ground-breaking policy changes in the short and medium term. The potential adjustment on the objective of social policy should be ‘the reinforcement of family support’

• at a more general level, the case of China calls into question, the industrialisation logic of welfare state development. Contrary to the idea that economic growth and industrialisation will lead to welfare state expansion, this study confirms that in the case of China, the industrial and economic growth over the last couple of decades has not been reflected in the welfare state policies.