Migrant survey reveals separate lives

By Miranda Shek Source:Global Times Published: 2012-8-22 23:30:05

 

Volunteers hand out flowers to migrants at the Shanghai Railway Station Wednesday. Photo: Cai Xianmin/GT
Volunteers hand out flowers to migrants at the Shanghai Railway Station Wednesday. Photo: Cai Xianmin/GT



Nearly 70 percent of married migrant workers in Shanghai live separate lives from their partners, according to a survey that a prominent employment website released Wednesday.

Daguu.com, the largest employment website in the country for blue collar workers, surveyed about 19,000 migrant workers born in the 1980s and 1990s about their marital status and relationship problems. Some 2,400 of the respondents work in Shanghai.

The company released the survey ahead of Thursday's Double Seventh Festival, better known as Chinese Valentine's Day. The festival falls on the seventh day of the seventh month of the Chinese lunar calendar.

Money is at the root of many of the relationship problems that local migrant workers face.

The survey found that 40 percent of respondents see their significant others only twice a year because of the expense of traveling. Most migrant workers in Shanghai have fewer than five days of paid annual holiday. Moreover, they cannot afford to rent apartments for their families to stay in the city.

"Some young, less skilled migrant workers live in the same city, but their workplaces are often far apart," said Wei Zimin, the website's spokesperson. "Most of them live in employer-provided dormitories where their spouses are not allowed to stay."

Only 9 percent of migrant workers in Shanghai meet their spouses on a weekly basis, according to the survey. Some 21 percent see their partners just once a year, usually during the Spring Festival holiday.

Tang Xin, an assembly line worker from Gansu Province, only visits her husband, who owns a small grocery store in their hometown, once a year. "It takes almost 22 hours on a train to get home from Shanghai," she told the Global Times. "The cost of living here is too high and we couldn't afford a hotel room if my husband came to visit."

A separate survey of more than 1,200 single migrant workers in Shanghai showed that they had trouble maintaining long distance relationships.

Only 56 percent of single migrant workers said they managed to hold on to their long distance relationships for more than one year. Eighteen percent said their relationships ended within three months.

The government could help by implementing more policies for migrant couples, said Wang Yuru, secretary-general of the Shanghai Psychological Counseling Association, who also writes family advice columns in several women's magazines.

"When spouses live far from each other, it is easy for marriages to run into trouble, such as extramarital affairs and other issues," she told the Global Times. "If employers in Shanghai could provide rooms specifically for married migrant workers and their spouses, it would be an efficient way to maintain a stable labor force."

 



Posted in: Society, Metro Shanghai

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