Predicament of migrant children who return home calls for attention of society at large

In the past 20 to 30 years, accompanying the rapid urbanization and large-scale population mobility, issues concerning education and growth of stay-at-home children, who are left at home by parents seeking employment away from home, and migrant children, who live with parents working away from home, received extensive attention in society. According to data evaluation, these two types of children account for 40% of all under-age children in China. In other words, almost 40% of children and adolescents are impacted by population movements.

A large number of research projects demonstrated that stay-at-home children and migrant children face many challenges and plights in their education and growth, such as inequality in educational opportunities, lack of emotional support. However, another group of children, being referred to as "migrant children who return home", face more severe challenges in their mental growth and education, which also needs the attention of our society. These children are a special group between stay-at-home children and migrant children. They used to be migrant children who went to cities to live and study with their parents, but due to policy and institutional reasons, they had to go back to their hometowns to continue living. Though “hometowns” are the native places of the children’s parents, most of these children were born and grew up in cities. After returning to their hometowns, many became stay-at-home children, who are different from others since they have experiences living and studying in cities.

For a long time, the academic world did not pay much attention to migrant children who return home and did not conduct in-depth research. They are also rarely mentioned in documents or educational news reports. In the limited investigations, researchers found that the children they interviewed had severe maladjustment in their studies and lives. The educational and human resources they accumulated in cities did not successfully transfer into the rural school settings. These children continuously shift between the identities of stay-at-home children and migrant children, they have no sense of belonging in their "hometowns", and also feel a sense of homelessness in cities. In recent years, I conducted three large-scale investigations with a joint research group. We used large sample data to conduct quantitative analysis on the mental health and educational challenges faced by these children. Our results also support the conclusions stated above.

The research group found that, migrant children who return home have poor sleeping qualities, higher than ordinary children and ordinary stay-at-home children. This group also has a high risk of falling into depression, almost 80% of them have such tendency, higher than ordinary children and ordinary stay-at-home children by 13% and 6% respectively. In addition, a considerable part of migrant children who return home, over1/3 in our samples, have low self-esteem.

Furthermore, the research discovered that migrant children who return home are more prone to be involved in school bullying. They can easily become "victims", "victims-turned perpetrators", or even "perpetrators". A surprising fact is that these children’s academic performances are also relatively poor. The entire sample group has low reading abilities and is likely to repeat a grade. The reasons could be that these children cannot adapt to life, the study materials are different from those in the cities, their mental conditions are unwell, and they are prone to being bullied. However, the research also found that some children who returned home with their parents performed well in school.

The reform of the residence registration system is gradually implemented in small and medium-sized cities. However, in some big cities, children whose Hukou is not registered locally have more difficulty attending public elementary or middle schools. Though many migrant families had high hopes on the policy of children being allowed to take the college entrance examination in their places of work other than those of their Hukou registration, this policy did not break through the restriction of Hukou. Since 2013, many cities announced the college entrance examination policy that children can take their examinations in places of their actual residence, rather than their place of Hukou. Yet many migrant children are still unable to sit the high school and college entrance examinations locally. Due to the tightening population control of certain cities, many schools for migrant workers' children were closed, which forced migrant children to return home

How big is the population that requires necessary attention? Currently, there is no authoritative data, but by rouge estimates, there should be approximately 10 million such children.

How do we solve the issue of migrant children who return home? First, this group calls for immediate, extensive attention from researchers and educational workers. What are the mid- to long-term negative impacts of returning home for the children, for their families, and for society at large? What are the challenges faced by these children in their growth? There are many similar serious questions that require attention from researchers, for them to describe and provide answers to. Policy makers and administrators of different regions should persevere to push for the construction of a law-abiding government, practical implementation of the compulsory education law, and guarantee the fundamental rights for these children to receive education in the places of work or residence of their parents or guardians. In addition, alleviating the pain of children when they return home requires continuing to carry forward the reform of the Hukou registration system and the college entrance examination system, to stop the population control measures of "using schools to control people".

Contributed by Song Yingquan, Associate Research Fellow at the Peking University China Institute for Educational Finance Research

Translated by Zhang Junye