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Recently, an increasing number of Chinese students has come to Australia to study; some of them opted to settle in Australia as permanent residents while others chose to return to China. More Chinese students are pursuing further studies overseas due to China's recent rapid economic growth, which increased the ranks of middle- and upper-middle class families who have the means to send their children to study abroad. The trend also reflects China's intergenerational wealth transfer in the "first demographic dividend" period. This paper reviews the recent patterns of international mobility of Chinese students to Australia and examines the factors that affect Chinese students' settlement decisions. The paper links the patterns of international mobility of students to the demographic structure of the sending country.

This study deals with the fertility behaviors of migrants in China. Based on fieldwork carried out in migrants' current community in Beijing and their home villages in Henan province, the study examined how culture and practices shaped in their home villages and urban influences bear on migrants' fertility behaviors. Findings from the study confirm the results of previous quantitative studies. Under current social conditions in China, it is unrealistic to expect any drastic changes in migrants' fertility patterns. The factors that brought down the fertility of urban residents, such as old-age pension and opportunities for social mobility, are not available to migrants. Overall, migration per se has no significant impact on migrants' fertility behaviors.

Recent trends in rural to urban migration in China indicate that more migrants are moving to the cities with their families, including young children. Without an urban household registration or hukou, migrant children do not have access to local schools in the cities, raising many concerns about the children's well-being. Using data from the 1997 Migrant Census in Beijing, this study sought to describe the social and demographic characteristics of migrant children in Beijing, to examine the patterns of school attendance of migrant children and to determine the factors affecting their school attendance. The study found that 88 percent of migrant children in Beijing were attending school. Migrant children whose parents had higher education, were non-agricultural hukou holders and those who had longer residence in Beijing had higher rates of school attendance. The study found some differences on the children's school attendance when the characteristics of migrant fathers and migrant mothers were examined separately.

AbstractThis study examines the changing role of traditional employment sector and the access to employment‐related citizenship rights in affecting migrant workers' settlement intentions in China. Traditionally, migrants who are informally employed were viewed as unsettled groups in Chinese cities. However, the expanded employment‐related citizenship rights provide more diverse channels for pursuing permanent urban settlement. We use data from China Migrants Dynamic Survey in 2013 to investigate migrant workers' permanent settlement intentions, taking into account their access to employment‐related citizenship rights, employment sector,hukoustatus, social‐economic attachments at the places of destination and origin, and regional variations. We found that self‐employed and informally employed migrants held a stronger intention to pursue permanent settlement if they were protected by the local urban insurance schemes, the so‐called "de facto" employment‐related citizenship. The study suggests that the dichotomy of employment sectors, formal versus informal, in understanding migrants' settlement decision has been weakened in China.

This paper examines poverty and income inequality in urban China by analysing recent survey data collected in four of the largest Chinese cities(1). Using a number of quantitative measurements, including poverty indices and Gini coefficients, the paper investigates income poverty and inequality among three groups, namely urban locals, urban migrants, and rural migrants. The results strongly suggest that urban poverty and inequality are a serious issue and that rural migrants have become a major segment in the urban poor class. The results are expected to contribute to the debate on how to improve public policy on poverty alleviation, which currently focuses only on officially registered urban locals. (China Perspect/GIGA)