Cities need slums

Big Chinese cities need slums for migrant workers, according to Tsinghsua University Professor Qin Hui. An April 15 article on the China View web site quotes him as saying this in a speech at a public forum on urbanization in Shenzhen:


"It is no shame for big cities to have such areas. On the contrary, Shenzhen and other cities should take initiatives to build cheap residential areas for low-income residents including migrant workers who want to stay in the cities where they work."

He is right, of course, since full-time residents and the country at large reap huge benefits from the people who travel 100s of miles from their homes to do dangerous and tedious work that the more affluent consider beneath them. Without ample living space, migrant workers are left to squatting in corrugated, cardboard shacks or residing in unfinished or partially demolished buildings, train stations, on the streets, and under bridges and eaves. Some are lucky enough to live in cramped domitories provided by their employers (see photograph).

With no immediate expectation for legal residency, even though they live in the cities most of the time, migrant workers will not be seen as regular members of city life. However, as Qin noted, migrant workers need to be included in cities' plans for providing housing to low-income citizens. The migrants could even build their own homes in designated areas, he said. Indeed, approximately 30 percent of them work in construction.

"To protect the rights of these people, we should respect their freedom to build houses in some designated areas, and improve their living conditions," said Qin.

It is interesting to note how migrant workers are treated as outcasts, even though they provide needed labor and services to city dwellers. Long hours, poor living and working conditions, sorry pay, and sometimes no pay are some of the agonies they face to provide living expenses for their families back home in rural locations. As seamtress Zheng Jingang says, "Sometimes I think about the foreigners wearing the clothes we make. The material is quite expensive and I think: I'm working here but I can't afford to wear these things. But I'm a migrant worker. I know a lot of things are unfair."

Work Cited: Solinger, Dorothy, The Floating Population in the Cities, pp. 274-288, China Off Center, ed., Blum and Jensen, 2002.