China’s own illegal immigrants
Hopkins-Nanjing students volunteer at school for migrant children
By Aaron Daniel Cantrell

A bell rings. Within seconds doors swing open and children stream into the Mingguang Elementary School’s yard of dirt and concrete. Runny noses, untied shoes, loud voices, big smiles and enviable energy—this is recess. The kids push and swarm and laugh for a short ten minutes before heading back to the classroom. They are typical kids; they could be from anywhere. Anywhere except Nanjing.

Mingguang Elementary School’s students are all children of migrant workers. Most are from Anhui, a neighboring province and one of China’s poorest. Their parents have come to pour concrete and to clean the homes of Nanjing’s middle class. In many places, China’s farms can no longer support the large populations that live there. So, Chinese are flooding into the cities to find jobs. According to McKinsey & Company, about 20 percent of China was urban in 1980; today that figure is approaching 50 percent, and by 2025 it is expected to be 66 percent.

Sometimes just one or both parents move to the city. Sometimes they bring their children. Unless the children are extraordinarily intelligent, or the parents can afford tuition—rarely the case for migrant workers—Nanjing’s public schools are closed to them.

This is because these families do not have a Nanjing hukou, or household registration. The hukou system keeps track of each Chinese family’s official residence. It is a vestige of the Mao era, when the Chinese government controlled where Chinese lived and worked. The hukou system hardly controls where Chinese live any longer, but Chinese who live in a city but have a rural hukou are deprived of the benefits of an urban hukou: employment, welfare, and education. Usually, rural Chinese can obtain a city hukou only through a large, powerful employer or connections within the government.

Those disadvantaged by the rigid hukou system, along with many progressive lawyers, have been highly critical of the discrimination it creates and have pushed for its abolition. Until then, however, these children will come to Mingguang Elementary School for class. Funded by private contributions and modest tuition, Mingguang School has a building and equipment far inferior to those of Nanjing’s proper schools. Each grade level has 70-80 students, and they are all taught in one room, by one teacher. Classrooms have no heat or electricity. The teachers are generally migrants themselves and often not even licensed to teach.

None of this is apparent from the children’s faces—at least when their English teachers arrive. Several Hopkins-Nanjing Center students volunteer as English teachers at Mingguang School a couple times a week. It is a break for the regular teachers, and it brightens the day of the students. The students’ English level is far behind the average level in a comparable classroom in a public school. Yet, some students are bright and receptive. This brings us back week after week.

In addition to teaching English, the Hopkins-Nanjing Center has been active in other ways to improve the children’s education. Last year, using donations from HNC community members and their friends and family, several HNC students and research fellows conducted an “eyeglass drive” for the Mingguang students. They tested each child’s eyesight and gave glasses to those who needed them. Unfortunately, this project ran into unforeseen cultural barriers: glasses are considered awkward and ugly, especially for girls. Last year, many students were fitted for glasses; today, few are wearing them.

Yet, we persist. The Rashi School of Newton, Massachusetts has contributed more money, and the HNC volunteers are inventing ways to use it. In some classrooms, such basic things as chalkboards are missing. That is something we can fix. We can also give them more extracurricular opportunities by providing art supplies and sports equipment. But it is hard to believe that we can remedy the grave social and legal limitations these children will face. China’s 200 million migrants (including 20 million migrant children) will need to find a place in the emerging China; their failure thus far to do so helps to explain skyrocketing crime and social unrest in China’s cities. Better education opportunities for China’s own “illegal immigrants” is an important first step.

Aaron Daniel Cantrell is a 1st year MA candidate in China studies at the Hopkins-Nanjing Center