The Downturn and Migration

Hunan Province is immediately northwest of Guangdong, China's booming coastal province which borders Hong Kong and Macau (map here).  However with the global downturn, Guangdong isn't booming the way it was a year or two ago.  Thus, tens of thousands of workers are being sent home--a forced reverse migration. 

From one week to the next, an eerie silence descended on the normally busy Panyu neighborhood, where the factory was located. At first Xiaoju and her fellow workers noticed other factories closing their gates. And because more and more workers were leaving, many street food vendors quickly dismantled their stands. After that, the billiard tables along the side of the street, where the men would spend what little free time they had, were suddenly empty and abandoned, like a beach town when winter arrives earlier than expected.

...

China's global factory is shedding its slave-like workers, cost-effectively and efficiently, almost as if they too were products on an assembly line. They sit in long rows, shoulder-to-shoulder, waiting for the trains that will take them back to their home provinces, to the places they once left for China's industrial east, lured by the promise of prosperity. Xiaoju (her name means "Little Chrysanthemum") finally has time to catch her breath and look around. She has a few more minutes left before her northbound train to Hengyang, in Hunan Province, is scheduled to depart.

The station is busy as it would normally be before the Chinese New Year, when companies in Guangdong Province--the enormous export factory that borders Hong Kong and includes the burgeoning large cities of Shenzhen and Dongguan--collectively send armies of migrant workers home on vacation. But this time the exodus is involuntary and unforeseen, and likely to last for an extended period of time--and the mood is understandably gloomy.

Most travelers are noticeably young, including many women like Xiaoju, who is 17 but looks 14. Almost all of the people waiting here for their trains could tell stories similar to those of three female workers from Hunan who have lost their jobs printing colorful stickers for jeans and are now waiting to leave, carrying full plastic bags. Or the young couple from faraway Chongqing, who worked in a textile factory making sweaters and whose belongings--including a rice cooker, a fan and mattress--are now almost blocking the way.

For many people in developing nations, working in a sweat shop is better than their other meager options.  As a trained worker in her factory (which made cheapo silver jewelry), Xioaju's base wage was $190 a month with just two days off each month.  She always worked overtime, giving her a 12-hour work day and a bit of spending money beyond the barest of necessities.

From an early age, Xiaoju knew that she would have to move away from the village by the time she finished middle school, because there was no future for her there. Her father ekes out a living as a migrant worker on construction sites, and he lives with her mother and their four-year-old son in another large city far away. Her sisters, 11 and 12, live on their grandfather's tiny farm.

...

The train stops in Hengyang, an industrial city of more than seven million people. From there, Xiaoju must travel another hour and a half by minibus to her village. Acrid smog wafts across the mountainous landscape. It comes from the exhaust fumes from the steel mills and from the countless fires farmers have set to burn their fields.

The stench doesn't bother Xiaoju. In fact, it reminds her of her days in school. She would have liked to continue going to high school, but her family lacked the necessary money. "Perhaps I could learn something new now," she thinks to herself, "to get a better job." But then she shakes her head immediately. "If I went back to school, my father would have to work even harder."

...

Xiaoju pushes open the wooden door and greets her grandfather. Nothing has changed. The bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling, the large bed, the earthen floor and the only symbol of progress: the permanently operating television set.

They all sleep in that lone bed. 

It's a lengthy and interesting article that's worth the read.