Family Planning and Fertility Among Temporary Migrants

This chapter describes the development of marriage and family planning legislation in response to the great increase in population mobility. I show that descriptions of migrants’ supposed ‘deviant’ behaviour in relation to marriage or births (such as marriage below the legal ages, or births out of plan) tend to be exaggerated and are in fact characteristic of the wider population. I explore the impact of fertility on migration and specifically the number of children migrants may be expected to have, according to the results of a small survey of temporary registered migrants I conducted in Beijing in June 1994 (referred to as the 1994 Beijing migrant survey). The chapter begins with a description of the survey population and the role of micro-demographic techniques. A history of the household registration system that controls mobility is outlined before the in-depth discussion of marriage and fertility.