Barriers to Return-to-Work for Injured Migrant Workers in China

Background and purpose:

The internal migration in China over the past three decades has been the greatest wave of voluntary migration in human history. According to the National Bureau of Statistics of China, there were around 268 million rural migrant workers in 2013. In 2011, there were about 120 million occupational injuries in China among all workers, and about 80% of those injured were migrant workers.

Prior research has assessed factors associated with return-to-work for individuals with occupational injuries, such as an individual’s socioeconomic characteristics, injury severity, and employer characteristics. However, there has been limited research exploring the barriers to return-to-work for migrant workers after their occupational injuries. This study addresses the above limitation by examining barriers that Chinese migrant workers encountered in returning to and maintaining their work after occupational injury. The study used the Wilcock (1999)’s theory of occupational deprivation to explain the economically and politically determined barriers that migrant workers experienced in returning to work.

Methods:

A qualitative research method with individual, face-to-face, and in-depth semi-structured interviews was adopted to explore the injured workers’ experiences and perspectives. The study collected a purposive sample of 63 blue-collar migrant workers with occupational injury or illness in 2013. The participants were distributed across 13 different provinces and were 37 years old in average. They were rated having low to moderate levels of injury, and identified the need for employment after their medical treatment. The interviews lasted 74 minutes in average. The researchers used NVivo 8.0 to store, code and analyze the data.

Results:

Of the 63 participants, only 22 were employed, 15 were self-employed, six returned to farming, and the others were jobless by the time the interviews were conducted. The participants reported employers’ refusal of their return or reduction in their income when they tried to return to the pre-injury positions. They also had to resign from their former jobs in exchange for a lump-sum payment of workers’ compensation from the government. However, when they had injury records, their reentry to the job market was limited regardless of the severity of injury level. Apart from accepting the low-pay menial jobs, they were hardly able to start their own small business due to a lack of sufficient financial resources and social capital in either sending or receiving areas. For those fortunate to obtain a new job, they faced social rejection by co-workers due to their deformed limbs and fingers, as well as the inconvenience and inefficiency in completing their work.

Conclusions and implications:

The barriers that the migrant workers encountered in returning to work reveal their vulnerability in job market after occupational injury. It is important that policy makers address the weakness of current labor law and social insurance law on workers’ compensation policies, as well as regulations on discrimination against disability in the workplace and job market. It is also imperative to reform China’s divisive Resident Registration system. Furthermore, social work interventions are needed to provide legal and social support for migrant workers after their occupational injury.