Transitional Identity of the New-Generation of Migration Workers and Its Characteristics

The large-scale flow of rural force into the cities has a history of over thirty years. As time marches on, the heterogeneity of the off-farm workers’ identity has become obvious. The new generation of migration workers at the age about 26, numbers about 100,000,000 in China, and they often change jobs in different places with their identity showing some transitional features as follows: They are neither urban citizens nor farmers but in-between or marginalized by their transitional role. The paper discusses their identity and concludes that the identity dilemma of migration workers is more related to the institutional classification than their individual choice. The hierarchal structure of such classification plus their desire for a change of identity has produced their crisis.