In urban social space, rural migrant labourers have an intersectional identity of being a rural, floating, and working-class group. Since the 1990s, researchers have explored the condition of social stratification in China. Among them, the most established and influential study to date is a nationwide investigative report published in 2002 (Lu, 2002). It outlines ten occupational categories, which are then classified into five social classes. The categorisation of social class was based on four factors – namely, occupation, organisation,¹ economic and cultural resources people have. Figure 1.2 shows the relationships of the ten occupational categories and the five social classes. Although that research was done almost 20 years ago, and the description was based on a nationwide analysis, it still resonates with my fieldwork data collected from five cities in Northern, Eastern, and Southern China. It is important to note that while Lu (2002) categorises social class by examining multiple indicators, he takes occupation as the main indicator. As a result, his visualisation of the relative positions of different social classes in the social space is occupation-based.

In this figure, some important points need to be explained. First, while the five classes/levels on the left side follow a descending sequence, the ten occupational categories on the right side do not necessarily follow a descending sequence. For example, being an owner of a private company (third from the top) or a professional (fourth from the top), one can both be in either upper, middle-upper, or middle-middle level, depending on the exact occupation and the organisational, economic and cultural resources of that person. In other words, there is not a superior or inferior sequence between a private company owner and a professional. The same can be said of the service-sector employees (seventh), industrial labourer (eighth) and agricultural labourer (ninth).

Second, within the Chinese context, the ‘bottom-level class’, ‘middle-lower class’ and the bottom of the ‘middle-middle class’ resonate with the concept of ‘working class’ in the Western context. The reason is that the three classes in China cover the main manual labourer occupation categories, such as service-sector employees, industrial labourer, and agricultural labourer (which accounts for the vast majority of the country’s population). Accordingly, most of the migrants I have interviewed can be categorised into these three classes.

Finally, there is a variety of socio-economic conditions within each occupational category. That is to say, people in the same occupational category can be classified into different social classes, depending on their occupation, income, cultural and organisational resources. For example, engaging in industrial labourer occupations, A is a technician with a professional certificate and works full time in a big state-owned company with a good income, while B is a low-skilled worker without a professional certificate and relevant experience, undertaking occasional work for several small, private factories with low pay. Their socio-economic situations can be very different. As a result, A may be considered as belonging to the middle-lower class, while B may be considered as belonging to the bottom class. Such diversity also applies to the migrant labourer group, as I will elaborate on in the following section.

As for the question of to which occupational category and social class rural migrant labours belong, there is not a clear, unified, and official definition. The term ‘migrant population’ refers to those who migrate from one place to another and do not hold the household registration (hukou) cards in their destination. The government, scholars, journalists, and ordinary people apply the term ‘migrant rural labourer’ to more or less the same group – namely, those rural migrants who are involved in routine manual work. Yet in most cases, people do not give a clear definition of this term, assuming that the readers have the same understanding as themselves. The authoritative definition of the term ‘migrant rural labourer’ (waichu nongmingong) comes from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS): ‘migrant rural labourer is those who have their household registrations (hukou) registered in rural areas but are working outside their villages’ (National Bureau of Statistics, 2021). According to this definition, any person who is employed or self-employed can be seen as a labourer, regardless of his/her actual occupation. As a result, some rural migrants are engaged in those occupations that can hardly be considered akin to a labourer’s job. For example, a rural migrant can be the owner or CEO of a construction company in Beijing. Therefore, an ambiguity exists in the NBS’s definition. The reason for this ambiguity is that traditionally, most of the rural residents worked as agricultural labourers with low income. This situation creates a perception link between the rural residency and manual labourer occupation in public discourses. Although this perception link is a prejudiced assumption, it is also accurate in many cases. In other words, if you are a rural migrant in an urban area, it is highly possible that you are working in a manual labourer job.²

A nationwide investigation (Yuan, 2010, p. 242) reveals that 20.1% of the ‘migrant labourer’ parents are manual workers in companies; 17.2% of them run their own small businesses (often with low income); 10% are construction workers; 9.6% are shopkeepers; 6.6% of them are unemployed; 5.4% work in haulage; 5.3% are managers; the remaining 25.8% are other kinds of labourers. In other words, most of them are doing labourer jobs, which are unlikely to offer them a strong monthly income. As revealed by Lu (2013, p. 13), in Shanghai, 33.4% of the migrant labourer families have their total monthly incomes within the range of ¥1,001–3,000 (£100–300 equivalent); 30.2% of the migrant families have total monthly incomes w...