Fascinating…a must-read for academics, students and a general public interested in the situation of rural migrants in China. - Raúl Delgado Wise

Today China has the second largest economy in the world. The largest human migration in history has fueled this rapid growth as people move from the countryside to work in China’s fast growing industrial cities. But China is changing. Today’s migrants from the countryside are a world apart from their fathers and grandfathers who made the same journeys to the metropolis in search of work decades before them. The older generation made the journey with every expectation of returning to the countryside once they had made some money. Todays generation, better educated and connected by technology, expects higher wages from working in cities than is the reality. These workers do not want to return home to work on the farm, so they frequently take employment that is precarious and poorly paid.

In this refreshingly open and enlightening book we hear the stories and hopes for the future from the people who live in the basements of cities across China.