| Summary/Abstract |
This article offers a detailed study of China's large group of rural children affected by present-day internal labor migration. The author defines key lines of international studies on the effects of labor migration on the mental, physical, and psychological development of the children of migrant workers in China are identified. It is shown that the form of labor migration changing from individuals to couples, and then to entire families, has substantially altered the position of rural children, thus opening new areas of study. There are now more than 100 million children affected by the wave of rural migration in China. Of these, around 70 million continue to live in villages, while more than 35 million have followed their parents into cities. The age at which children move is often between six and 12, due to their entering different grades of public school and numerous aspects of urbanization in China. The considered group of children is neither homogeneous nor static, and a multifaceted approach is needed to study their environment. A number of problems encountered by two subgroups can be identified based on differences in the environments in which a child grows up.
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