Return Migration of Rural-Urban Migrant Children in China

Rural migrant children in urban China face multiple barriers in the public education system, and these challenges lead many of them to return to their rural origin communities. Despite the frequency of this phenomenon, however, to date there is limited documentation of child return migration in China. This article presents new evidence on the patterns of child return migration using multistate life tables and nationally representative data. At each age, about 40% of migrant children return to rural areas within the next two years. Rural children spend more years as returned migrants than as left-behind children without migration experience before reaching the age of 18. Notably, the probability of return migration is significantly higher for children from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds when they are about to enter middle school. Once returned, returned migrant children are likely to re-migrate during the middle school years. These findings highlight the prevalence of return migration among rural-urban migrant children and its potential to exacerbate socioeconomic inequalities among them. Moreover, previous research on education quality in urban China has often overestimated the progress of efforts to promote equal opportunities for rural migrant children due to the lack of attention paid to return migration. Though much attention is appropriately given to the incorporation of migrant children into urban settings, return migration is nonetheless common, and the reincorporation of urban migrants back into rural societies and rural school systems thus warrants both policy and research attention.