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Sociology of Migration and Post-Western Theory

 | 
Laurence Roulleau-Berger
, 
Liu Yuzhao

Migration and Work

Successfully Becoming a Member of the New Middle Class: Qi

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1This interview was conducted in September 2015 in Shanghai near Qi’s workplace. Qi was a 25-year-old woman whose hometown is Anhui Province.

2Qi is a young lady who was born in the rural area of Anhui Province in 1990. She is the only child in her family. Her mother had come to Shanghai in 1993 and had worked in an electronics factory for 10 years. After that, her mother worked in the school cafeteria run by Qi’s uncle, who had come to Shanghai in 1990. Qi’s uncle started a school for migrant children. Qi’s father came to Shanghai around 1995, but he returned to his hometown shortly afterwards, as he could not adapt to the pace of life in Shanghai. Due to long-term separation and dissatisfaction, Qi’s parents divorced when Qi was a college student, and after that she lived with her mother.

3In 1993, Qi was three years old when she came to Shanghai with her mother. At preschool age, she followed her mother, floating between her hometown and Shanghai. She and her mother lived in the Minhang district. At the age of 8, she began her primary school education in Shanghai in a primary school for children of migrant workers, called ZF Primary School, that was located near their rental place. In grade three, since ZF primary school was merged into MH primary school, which was also a primary school for children of migrant workers, Qi moved to MH primary school and studied there till graduation. From grade one to grade five, there were fewer and fewer classmates in Qi’s class. Most of them went back to their hometown to continue their studies because they lacked the qualifications to enroll in a middle school in Shanghai. Qi did not know where to go. The school opened by her uncle in the Qingpu district, named LH school, which included primary school and junior high school, offered hope. After graduating from primary school, Qi entered LH school for junior high school. As the headmaster, her uncle hired the teachers for LH school from his hometown in Anhui Province, selecting those with rich teaching experiences to ensure quality teaching. In the junior high school part of LH school, there were 20 or 30 students in one class, and Qi was always one of the top 2 students in her class. Without Shanghai hukou she had no chance of getting further education in Shanghai. She hoped to get admitted to the university with the help of her uncle and her mother, so she was asked to return to her hometown in the third grade of junior high school so that she could have the chance to take the high school entrance examination. It was a turning point in Qi’s life. If she did not go back to her hometown, she could only go to vocational schools and technical schools in Shanghai. On the other hand, if she went back to her hometown, she would have a chance to take the high school entrance examination and then have a chance for the college entrance examination, but this also meant sudden separation from her family and the need to adapt to her new environment. After weighing the pros and cons, in the end Qi returned to her hometown at the beginning of the third year in junior high school.

4After returning to the school in her hometown, in many ways Qi did not adapt to her new environment. The first way involved her living habits. The school in her hometown was divided into classes of different ranks according to the students’ scores. Qi was in the class of students with better academic performance. The students of her class could live at school, but the dormitory conditions were simple and crude. According to the school timetable, she had to get up around 5 or 6 o’clock in the morning and study more than 12 hours a day, which completely exhausted her. What was worse, she sometimes got ill, and she went to the school clinic almost every week. Moreover, she was not used to school meals. The second way involved difficulties in everyday communication due to her accent. Because she had lived in Shanghai for several years, Qi spoke Mandarin when she met strangers, and she would speak in dialect only to her family members. In the school in her hometown, everyone spoke in dialect, including teachers in class. But she could not speak in dialect in class. When Qi habitually spoke Mandarin to everyone, she aroused disgust among her peers. So, she had to force herself to speak in dialect in school. The third way pertained to the school’s learning content. Compared with the other students in her class in the hometown school, Qi could get a very high score in English, but her mathematics score was poor, and her scores for politics, history, and other sub-classes were much poorer. This was because there is no requirement for success rate in migrant schools in Shanghai, so the students did not study hard in politics and history. Therefore, in the third year of junior high school Qi had to recite all the lessons she had learned of politics and history. Finally, she successfully got admitted to the local senior high school.

5In 2009, Qi was admitted to a university in the city of Chuzhou, a small city in Anhui Province, where she majored in computer network engineering. After entering the university, she set a clear goal for each stage in the four years’ study. When she was a freshman, she participated in various performances and activities, and at the same time she studied hard and won the national inspirational scholarship. In her sophomore year, she worked hard on professional courses and participated in all kinds of professional competitions, and she won various awards, including the national scholarship. In the first two years, she got the certificates of a network engineer, and she passed her CET-4 and CET-6 (English examinations). And in her junior year, she met her boyfriend.

6Starting in the summer vacation of Qi’s junior year, she was engaged in an internship in the city of Nanjing, a 15-minute ride from Chuzhou by high-speed railway. Qi’s major at the university was related to hardware, which was called embedded system, referring to programmable control chips, such as writing programs that enable robots to move and speak. She wanted to find an internship in line with her major. Qi’s first internship was with a well-known computer company, and the post provided for undergraduates involved the most basic of jobs, such as changing computer chips. After three months of the summer internship, from June to August 2012, Qi believed she would not learn any more new knowledge from the internship, and the salary was not enough for her to maintain a basic living in Nanjing. After asking the department manager for a promotion and failing to receive one, she decided to resign.

7In her fourth year of university, Qi did not give up looking for a job related to her major. She thought that with her awards and certificates in various science and technology competitions she could find a good job, such as hardware engineer, programming, or product assistant. But even after sending her resume out several times, she received no response. Later, she found that being a female and attending a common university limited her choice of employment. She decided to break through the major restrictions and started looking for work unrelated to her major. Her job-hunting goal changed to a high salary position. She insisted on choosing Nanjing as her workplace. This was because Qi, who had lived in the countryside, was unwilling to return to the countryside or similar places, and Chuzhou, where her university was located, was such a place in her eyes. Nanjing, as a city close to Chuzhou city, was the ideal destination for her work.

8With these job-hunting expectations, in October 2012 Qi entered W company and began to engage in telephone sales, that is, selling software related to negotiable securities operation. For Qi, this was a brand-new area in her knowledge that she needed to learn from scratch. With excellent learning abilities and good communication skills, Qi had achieved good results in the sales position. Two months after she entered the company, she was being paid 3,500–4,000 yuan per month, which was a satisfying income for her, as she had not graduated at that time. At the end of 2012, her department planned to expand, and all the Sales Champions would be allowed to compete for the position of director. Qi, who once won the sales championship, also made a presentation and tried to compete, but she failed due to a lack of experience. However, her performance in the competition was noticed by the general manager, who was also the head of the human resources department of the Nanjing branch. Later, the general manager came to her and asked her to transfer to the human resources department to become a staff member. After thinking further, Qi decided to work in the human resources department and was hired by the company after graduation. From the beginning of 2013 to September 2015, Qi worked in human resources, including training, recruitment, corporate culture, and program design. As W company’s headquarters are in Shanghai, Nanjing is only one of its branches. In September 2014 the company leadership decided to undertake a new business development in Shanghai, and Qi’s boss was transferred to Shanghai to take charge of new business development. Qi also was asked to come to Shanghai with her boss to take charge of the human resources part of the new project, a much more challenging job than before. At the same time, she had to bear working overtime and engaging in high-intensity work, but the job also resulted in good income as returns for this.

9Qi’s boyfriend, with her help, came to Shanghai to work with her. She said her boyfriend’s family had a flexible mindset and would not force them to marry in a hurry. Of course, in order to get married they bought an apartment located on the outskirts of Shanghai. By the time of the interview in 2015, Qi had not gotten a Shanghai hukou, but she did not think that lacking a Shanghai hukou would be an obstacle for her children to go to school in the future because she herself was a case of trying one’s best to always get higher education. More importantly, she thought this issue was long way off her, and the most important thing for her at the moment was to get better achievements in her work.
This interview was done with Qi on 13 September 2015. After that, we kept in touch to keep abreast of her situation. In 2016, Qi quit her job in W company and enrolled in an MBA program at a key university in Shanghai. In 2018, she started her own business with friends in Shanghai.

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