In mid-February, after the beginning of spring, Beijing remained cold and gloomy. Teachers at the Tongxin Future Learning Center were busy during the final week before the start of the new semester, preparing to welcome the students. Some children who had returned to Beijing early were already back at school, though the heating had not yet been turned on to save costs before the start of the semester. The Tongxin Future Learning Center is an activity space for the children of migrant workers in Beijing, located in Pichu Village outside the Fifth Ring Road of Beijing. This is one of the most well-known urban villages in Beijing, accommodating many migrant workers and has even produced amateur writers like Fan Yusu, who worked as a nanny.
Normally, after the Spring Festival, children gradually return to school. These children are mostly the offspring of domestic workers, cleaners, security guards, construction workers, and individual vendors working in Beijing. In the past year or two, due to the dual impact of the pandemic and changes in education policies, a number of migrant worker children’s schools in Beijing have been affected, experiencing interruptions in their operations.
“The school was told not to open.” In the autumn semester of 2021, Ren Wenxin remembers that some parents had already paid tuition fees and completed registration. But suddenly, the school received a notice telling them not to open. “We quickly assisted them in finding other schools to enroll in. After completing the enrollment process, there was another disturbance at the school, and the original school said it could still open as usual, so some students went back.” Ren Wenxin is the head of the Collaborative Project for Libraries for Children of Migrant Workers, a public welfare project that provides reading services for children of migrant workers.
Labor migration may be one of the most significant features of population movement in mainland China over the past 40 years. Laborers from rural and urban areas leave their hometowns for cities in search of a better life. Meanwhile, beneath the vast migration, there are diverse forms of families and young children. Migrant workers, also known as “migrant workers” or “rural migrant workers,” are “foreigners” who have not yet obtained full urban citizenship and linger on the margins. Children left behind in their hometowns are called “left-behind children,” while those brought along are called “migrant children.”
In 2017, the 21st Century Education Research Institute and the New Citizen Program, a public welfare organization, jointly released the “Report on the Development of Education for Migrant Children in China (2016)”, the first blue book on migrant children in China. The report pointed out that as of October 2015, the total number of migrants in the country had reached 247 million. The total number of “migrant children” and “left-behind children,” both groups of migrant workers’ offspring, was approximately 100 million. To put it more vividly, four out of every ten children are affected by population migration—they are “migrating” around us.
For a long time, China’s household registration system has played a role in controlling population movement and coordinating the allocation of social resources. Due to the lack of household registration at their place of residence, the children of migrant workers often cannot enjoy the same educational opportunities as registered children. Choosing to stay in their hometown as “left-behind” children means being separated from their parents, while choosing to remain in the city means facing a difficult path to further education.
Because they cannot participate in the local high school entrance examination (zhongkao) and college entrance examination (gaokao), they need to make choices in the second or third year of junior high school, either returning to their hometown after completing compulsory education, attending vocational schools, or entering the workforce. For many migrant children, dropping out of school and working early are foreseeable paths.
In 2014, the State Council issued a reform opinion on the household registration system, fully opening up the settlement restrictions in towns and small cities while strictly controlling the population size of mega-cities with more than 5 million people. Against the backdrop of population relocation, many migrant workers were forced to leave.
At that time, Beijing raised the threshold for compulsory education for non-Beijing students and extensively demolished schools for children of migrant workers. Unlike the Pearl River Delta region, where there is a greater demand for labor mobility originating from industrialization, migrant workers in Beijing are more concentrated in the tertiary sector, such as catering, retail, and construction.
In Beijing, migrant workers usually live in areas where urban and rural areas merge, or in small corners like urban villages. Wali in Chaoyang District, Taiyanggong, and Bajia in Haidian District are typical examples, and schools that enroll migrant children are also mostly located in these areas.
Starting from September 2022, we continuously visited schools for migrant children, their families, and their supporters in Beijing, writing this report in an attempt to showcase the “migrant dilemma” of migrant children in the city under multiple influences.
The Sense of Floating
A survey targeting parents of elementary school migrant children revealed that the average length of residence in Beijing for respondents reached 10.2 years. However, for these migrant families, residing for 10 years does not necessarily imply “stability”; their mentality and livelihoods are often in flux. For migrant children, the most direct impact of this instability is “frequent school transfers.”
Xiao Yao is a migrant child whom Ren Wenxin has assisted in her work. Due to her father’s work delivering take-out, she and her sister live with their grandparents. Due to poverty, many times Xiao Yao’s dinner consists of just “drinking water.”
“We often joke that the group we serve is ‘hidden in the shadows.’ It’s hard to imagine that in Beijing, there are children who struggle even to get proper nutrition. Intergenerational poverty continues to occur, although there are also positive new trends,” says Ren Wenxin.
The school Xiao Yao previously attended, a school for children of migrant workers, was closed down. After several negotiations, she enrolled in a nearby public school midway through. It is a mixed public school, partially accommodating children from migrant worker schools, but these children are often allocated to the same class and segregated from urban children. “Teachers often think, ‘Why is your foundation so weak?’” Previously, Xiao Yao’s grades at the migrant worker school were above average, but in the public school, she became a “poor student.”
“Many children feel very frustrated because of this. We help them develop study plans and encourage them to actively participate in class activities. It takes almost half a year for their grades to start catching up little by little,” Ren Wenxin said.
In 2018, the New Citizen Program, the public welfare organization where He Ran works, initiated a tracking program for migrant children returning home. Through field observations, interviews, and questionnaires, they tracked and recorded the stories of 43 sixth-grade graduates from the New Hope School, a nine-year private school for children of migrant workers in Beijing, to understand their whereabouts and changes in the years after graduation. He Ran is the head of this project.
Starting from the last semester before graduation, He Ran and her colleagues went to teach the students every week, from debate competitions to sex education classes and movie classes. He Ran hoped that these relaxed and interesting activities would benefit the children and also bring them closer together. By the end of the summer vacation in 2018, 25 out of the 43 students in this primary school graduation class had returned to their hometowns. According to statistics from September 2022, 15 of these children enrolled in vocational schools, 23 continued their studies, 4 dropped out, and the situation of one student is pending.
Cao Yu is one of the students tracked by He Ran. After dropping out of vocational school in April 2022, he worked as a waiter in dumpling shops, hot pot restaurants, and roast duck restaurants, but none of his jobs lasted more than half a month. One night in June, He Ran received a photo from Cao Yu of him sleeping on a bench—his shoes off, feet propped up on the back of the bench, the night hazy. Because he had nowhere else to go, Cao Yu had to sleep on the bench. He told He Ran that he had resigned again, making it the fifth job he had quit in six months.
Cao Yu, originally from Anhui, was born and raised in Beijing. His mother is a natural-born mute. Among the 43 students investigated by He Ran, those who chose to continue their studies were generally high-achieving students. However, Cao Yu was not among them. He originally planned to study automotive repair at a vocational school in his hometown to acquire a specialized skill. However, he dropped out again shortly after starting.
As the transition to secondary school begins, these children face divergent choices. Those who wish to continue their studies gradually return to their hometowns, while students who do not want to pursue further education, plan to work, or attend vocational schools often linger at school. In the book “Research on the Psychology of Left-behind Children and Migrant Children,” edited by Professor Shen Jiliang, a developmental psychologist at Beijing Normal University, it is mentioned that this instability often brings them a sense of floating.
He Ran remembers that during graduation, she and her colleagues designed a farewell segment, encouraging the children to capture moments at the school with photographs. Children who submitted their photos would receive a photo album from the organization as a graduation gift, preserving unique memories. He Ran initially thought the children would be enthusiastic, but in reality, very few classmates were interested. “There was absolutely no atmosphere of farewell that we had imagined, that difficult-to-see-again vibe,” she said.
“As I got closer with this group of children, I realized that for them, separation was quite common,” He Ran said. “Many classmates had changed schools several times during primary school, and some had experience with being left behind and then transferring from their hometowns. So ‘separation’ is a normalized and routine mobile behavior for them.”
The Threshold for School Admission
The Beijing Collaborators Social Work Development Center (hereafter referred to as “Collaborators”) was established in February 2003 and is one of the earliest private social work organizations in the country. In 2003, shortly after its establishment, the organization encountered the SARS epidemic. During that period, Collaborators began a series of SARS relief efforts, with the goal of finding migrant workers in distress during the epidemic. During their search, they discovered a large number of migrant children.
At the beginning of their service, founder Li Tao traveled extensively to areas in Beijing with a high concentration of migrant populations, such as Zhangwanfen and Heiqiao Village, which are urban-rural fringe areas. “The children of these migrant workers often live in makeshift huts in vegetable fields. They attend schools for children of migrant workers, but at that time, the conditions of these schools were much worse than they are now, and when they returned to the community after school, there was basically no one to take care of them, and there were many problems,” Li Tao told CBN Weekly.
In urban areas, migrant children usually attend two types of schools: private schools represented by schools for children of migrant workers, and mixed public schools where they study alongside local students. In terms of qualifications and educational quality, the latter is generally preferred by parents. However, even though the government and relevant departments have relaxed restrictions on migrant children entering public schools, enrollment conflicts remain unresolved. On one hand, public schools have limited capacity; on the other hand, these schools are often located on the outskirts of urban education, mostly in urban-rural transition zones, and high-quality educational resources in big cities are basically inaccessible to migrant children.
Currently, enrollment policies for migrant children in various places can be roughly divided into two categories: “point-based enrollment system” and “material-based admission system.” The point-based enrollment system arranges children to enter public schools based on the points accumulated by the migrant population, ranked from high to low within the region. This method is used in some areas of the Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta. The material-based admission system allows children to obtain local enrollment qualifications after their parents prepare materials that meet policy requirements. This system is used in cities such as Beijing, Tianjin, Nanjing, and Wuhan.
Since 2014, Beijing has required “five complete certificates” for the enrollment of accompanying children, including proof of actual residence, proof of employment, household registration, residence permit, and proof of unattended guardianship, among others. Depending on the requirements of each district, parents sometimes need to prepare more than thirty pieces of proof. Among them, the proof of unattended guardianship was abolished in 2019, and the policy requirement became “four complete certificates.” For migrant workers, the relatively difficult certificates to obtain are proof of employment and proof of actual residence.
“The landlord refused to provide us with a photo of the property certificate. In the end, after some negotiation and an additional payment of 2000 yuan, he was willing to cooperate with us to submit these materials,” Bai Bing told CBN Weekly. “Every semester, many families cannot enroll their children in public schools for various reasons and are still preparing some materials, so they consider private schools as a transitional option.”
Over the past two years, Bai Bing has changed schools for her daughter three times, facing obstacles in handling enrollment procedures for various reasons. Whenever she feels exhausted, Bai Bing recalls a situation described by a parent she met at an event— their child stayed behind in their hometown to study, often skipped classes, and eventually reached a point where they considered suicide due to academic pressure. Bai Bing worried that her daughter might become a left-behind child, so she made up her mind to ensure her daughter completed junior high school in Beijing and stayed by her side. In September 2022, after completing all the procedures, Bai Bing finally transferred her daughter to a public school, where she could study stably until primary school graduation.
For parents who are less focused on their children’s academic achievements, schools for children of migrant workers have become a haven for migrant children. Compared to public schools, these schools have lower tuition fees and relatively simple admission requirements. These schools are privately operated, with funding mainly coming from student tuition fees, but parents often worry about the quality of education provided.
With low wages, limited opportunities for advancement, and a lack of prestige associated with these schools, it is difficult for them to attract good teachers. “Young teachers hardly stay because of a bit of teaching experience they manage to gain. The turnover rate of teachers in these schools is high,” according to He Ran. Some schools even resort to a “one-teacher package” system, where one teacher is responsible for teaching all subjects in a class.
The principal of a caring Hope School in Beijing told us that there are hardly any young teachers in his school. “Young teachers can’t stay, primarily because of low salaries. Others are not willing to come because their aspirations are not here. The teachers here typically have a minimum of 3 years of experience, with many having over 10 or even 15 years of teaching experience,” he said. These experienced teachers come from all over the country, often moving to Beijing with their families, lacking prestigious qualifications, mostly having only a certificate in teaching or higher.
However, even with limited conditions, the existence of schools for children of migrant workers at least provides opportunities for children to receive education in urban areas.
For these schools, the past two years have seen a greater impact from adjustments in education policies. In 2021, aiming to achieve educational equity, curb the development of elite private schools and educational institutions, and limit educational inequality, the eight ministries jointly issued the “Implementation Regulations of the People’s Republic of China on the Promotion of Private Education Law,” which required a reduction in the enrollment scale of private schools nationwide and to be controlled within 5% of the red line. This prompted the closure and removal of a large number of privately owned schools in major cities, and schools for children of migrant workers, due to their private nature, inevitably became affected.
“All the detailed policies implemented in society are first and foremost affecting this group of people. They are always the ones on the outermost periphery, the first to be attacked,” said He Ran to CBN Weekly, “To some extent, more schools for children of migrant workers have been closed. Many teachers are now unemployed, many of whom come from schools that were temporarily closed.”
According to statistics from the New Citizen Plan, as of 2014, there were a total of 127 schools for children of migrant workers in Beijing, with nearly 100,000 students. However, since 2017, with the issuance of the “Opinions on Strengthening the Management of Non-Academic Educational Institutions in Beijing,” which promoted the relocation of private schools from the main urban areas to the suburbs and the demolition of the Dahongmen Industrial Belt resulting in the evacuation of a large number of schools, other schools have gradually withdrawn due to lack of qualifications, failure to meet indicators, or school relocation. Taking Daxing District, where migrant populations are relatively concentrated, as an example, in 2004, there were over 40 schools for children of migrant workers, but now, for migrant children, “only one middle school and two primary schools” remain, according to the principal of the aforementioned caring charity school, speaking to CBN Weekly. As of February this year, reporters repeatedly tried to call more than a dozen schools for children of migrant workers in Beijing, but they were unable to make contact due to closures.
The impact is not only on the schools themselves; libraries built within schools for children of migrant workers have also been affected. Due to the complex operations of schools and efforts to provide a long-term stable reading environment for children, setting up libraries for migrant children within these schools has become a compromise for some charities. Weilan Library is a charity library set up by the New Citizen Plan in schools for children of migrant workers and in communities in urban-rural areas. Originally, there were 43 branches in Beijing, but now there are only about a dozen, mostly concentrated in the outskirts of Beijing. “Some new branches were built during the summer vacation, but the next day the school received a notice saying they were not allowed to operate,” said Wu Lili, the external cooperation manager of Weilan Library.
The challenges of supporters
When conducting the rural tracking project, He Ran discovered that the greater challenge actually stemmed from the parents of the children. During each follow-up visit, He Ran constantly needed to explain to the parents, sometimes encountering very impatient ones. “They would wonder what’s the use of doing this? Some parents would say, ‘You don’t need to call anymore, the child is fine, everything is good.’”
Between the market and the government, it’s often public service departments like community organizations that fill in the gaps. This is precisely what organizations like the New Citizens Project do. Previously, the New Citizens Project had undertaken two school projects, one to support teaching staff and the other to provide childcare services. The choice to do “childcare” was because only by grasping the time after school and during holidays could social workers and volunteers have the opportunity to directly interact with parents and children, thus influencing their behavior and thinking. However, as a community organization, it takes a long time to gain trust from the school, which also somewhat limits the progress of the project. The tracking project for migrant children after graduation was an attempt following the end of the teacher training project.
Another unavoidable issue is the financial difficulties organizations face in their operations. “Whether it’s our courses or library, they mainly target low-income groups in urban villages, most of whom are free or only pay a subsidized price, and currently, we are in a situation where income doesn’t cover expenses. So, before 2020, we didn’t have a stable and continuous source of income, only a small amount of funds donated by friends, philanthropists, and companies,” said Wang Bo, founder of the TONGXIN Children’s Friendly Space, to CBN Weekly.
Wang Bo, born in the 1980s, comes from a poor village in northern Henan. In 2012, he participated in a public welfare project, visiting schools for children of migrant workers in urban villages. It was a cramped classroom, with desks made of long wooden boards and bricks stacked up, making squeaky sounds whenever the children moved, just like the environment he had when he was a child. That scorching afternoon left a deep impression on Wang Bo; he never thought that, after 20 years, there would still be children studying in such difficult conditions. It was also from that moment on that paying attention to the “migrant worker group” became a part of his life.
In 2015, Wang Bo began preparing to establish a library, a small space located in the backyard of the TONGXIN Future Learning Center, providing a place for migrant children to read, communicate, and develop life skills. Initially, the library mainly relied on Wang Bo and volunteers to operate in their spare time, with low manpower and operating costs. However, after the 2020 pandemic, for various reasons, the TONGXIN Library needed to independently bear costs such as rent, utilities, and full-time staffing. Without the benefits of reduced rent and other preferential measures, the pressure of profit and loss fell squarely on Wang Bo’s shoulders.
“2020 was a very dark moment for me, both internally and externally, with many things impacting this matter.” In order to sustain the TONGXIN Library, Wang Bo had to seek funding externally while also internally redesigning and developing courses and projects that could generate income. The membership system was one such attempt starting in 2021, charging 50 RMB per month. Additionally, they organized summer camps, nature experiences, and some fee-based urban study programs. It was only through these efforts that the library managed to operate somewhat normally over the past two years. “Funding is crucial; every month, we are raising funds for the library’s rent. The availability of funds determines how long you can sustain this endeavor and whether you can provide timely services to those in need,” said Wang Bo.
Both libraries and daycare centers require social workers to maintain stable operations, and the cultivation of social work talent requires time and accumulation of practical experience. Ren Wenxin found that the social work community faces a significant challenge, often after three to five years of entry, social workers are capable of working independently, but this period coincides with the time when they need to get married and start a family. “We have many experienced frontline social workers who, after having children, can only choose to return to their hometowns. Surviving in Beijing after starting a family brings immense pressure, leading to the loss of social work talent. In fact, most of us are also considered part of the floating population,” Ren Wenxin said.
The Road to Home
Due to the separation of household registration and residence, the educational path for migrant children in urban areas is challenging. Starting from kindergarten enrollment, transitioning to elementary school, middle school, high school entrance exams, and college entrance exams, each stage presents a significant challenge. If parents fail to navigate these stages successfully or lack determination, the family may face separation at any time, and migrant children may become left-behind children.
In recent years, influenced by the household registration and education policies of large cities, many migrant children who have long resided in urban areas have returned to their hometowns to study, in order to adapt to local education and entrance exams in advance. These children are referred to as “returning migrant children”. Since 2015, the education policy for migrant children has shifted from “coordination of two types of integration” to the “promotion of urbanization of treatment for migrant children”. On the surface, the situation for migrant children appears to be improving. However, recent studies by numerous scholars suggest that “leaving” the city remains the mainstream choice for these children.
A similar situation is observed in Shanghai, where the market economy is more active. According to statistics from the Shanghai Communist Youth League, after graduating from junior high school, children of migrant workers in Shanghai face three options: only a few students with good grades return to their hometowns for high school, 50% of students engage in business with their parents in Shanghai, or they enter vocational schools, while the rest are directly integrated into society.
“The reason for this mismatch is quite simple. Because our country has a ‘dual-main’ policy, which requires urban governments to continuously increase the proportion of migrant children enrolled in public schools. This entails two strategies — one is to enlarge the numerator, ensuring that more children enter public schools; the other strategy is to reduce the denominator, thereby increasing the proportion of children attending public schools after leaving the city,” said Xiong Yihan, a professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs at Fudan University, in an interview with CBN Weekly.
During his doctoral studies, Xiong Yihan volunteered at a private school in Shanghai. This school was affected by policy changes and was closed down, with all sixth-grade students transferred to a public school. High-performing students were dispersed among other classes, while other students were placed in new classes. These students were criticized by teachers at public schools for their “poor foundation,” and those who couldn’t keep up were “sent back” to classes for migrant children. Xiong Yihan found that many migrant children believe they should not play with urban children and actively maintain social boundaries between them.
Xiong Yihan believes that this behavior stems from the children’s self-protection. “In order to avoid emphasizing their outsider status in intergroup interactions, they prefer to actively isolate themselves from local children and not play with them, thus maintaining identity differences.”
In his research, Xiong Yihan found that migrant children of migrant workers have few opportunities to interact with urban peers, whether at school or in the community. This is because although the proportion of migrant children attending public schools is increasing, most schools segregate migrant children into separate classes, and some schools even stagger their schedules to avoid overlap with local students’ classes, resulting in minimal interaction between migrant children and urban peers.
For migrant children in urban areas, on one hand, parents are busy making a living and neglect to provide adequate support and care for their children, leading to a lack of effective supervision and guidance for migrant children. On the other hand, there is severe polarization in their learning abilities, with only a small number of children having good study habits, while the majority lack autonomy and motivation to excel academically.
Some scholars believe that the reasons behind migrant children’s aversion to learning or feeling hopeless about education are multifaceted. Firstly, their own educational foundation is often weak due to frequent mobility or school transfers. Additionally, outdated educational beliefs among parents lead to a lack of emphasis on their children’s learning. Moreover, due to household registration restrictions, both parents and children lack expectations for education, leading to a “breakdown.”
Little Yao, who had already transferred to a public school, ultimately returned to his hometown due to practical reasons. Aside from changes in education policies, the parents’ livelihoods were a more significant challenge under previous pandemic controls. Despite the family’s desire to keep the child in Beijing for schooling convenience, Yao’s father’s company did not provide him with social security, disqualifying Yao from continuing his education in a public school. After discussion, the family decided to send Yao back to their hometown.
Some scholars analyze that many migrant children have been living in cities with their parents since birth, and once they return to their hometowns, they may feel overwhelmed by a sense of unfamiliarity and helplessness. For those who only return to their hometowns once a year, the hometown is not necessarily a welcoming place.
This year, He Ran discovered an interesting point: after New Hope School was demolished, most students transferred back to their original places, and the group of students who returned to their hometowns in the eighth grade “none of them adapted to the environment or made friends.” They did not continue their relationships with classmates in their daily lives— they did not ride bikes home together or go to the park on weekends. “Compared to left-behind children, these returning children are more withdrawn and perform worse in peer relationships.”
Apart from the lower economic development level and fewer job opportunities in their hometowns, migrant children also mention inconveniences in transportation and getting shoes dirty when it rains. “This actually indicates that migrant children have already identified with the urban way of life, and rural life in their hometowns is increasingly distant from them. The city is shaping the temperament, disposition, ideas, and identity of migrant children in its own unique way. These migrant children cannot regard their hometowns as their destination like their parents’ generation,” as mentioned in a study by Lu Huilin’s team from the Department of Sociology at Peking University in 2015.
Choosing to stay behind means facing a foreign hometown and a life away from parents; choosing to move means facing the unstable reality of education. For many migrant children, the option of retreating to their hometown has disappeared because the city is not just a temporary refuge for them, but a place where they were born and raised. After completing their education in their hometowns, some migrant children return to the city, repeating the same path of their parents’ employment. It is worth noting that due to the resource competition with local urban residents, migrant children are more marginalized in public discourse compared to left-behind children, and reaching consensus on issues related to them is more difficult than with left-behind children.