Every so often, breaking news brings China’s left-behind children to the forefront of public attention. Recent reports of left-behind child orphans being adopted and trained by martial arts clubs led to public debate over the fate of rural children growing up alone, as well as the shocking finding from a survey late last year in which 11.9% of left-behind children said that their parents working a…
This latest installment in our “Hope and Opportunity” article series, and last week's piece on Rat Tribes and Ant hills, we take a look at why young migrant workers are still drawn to Shanghai. Understanding Shanghai's Young Migrant Workers Young migrant workers born in the 1980s and 1990s now make up 60% of the total migrant population in China. Compared to their parents, the younger generation…
As parents crowd outside the door, a classroom is full of excited six-year-olds ready to go home. The teacher passes out homework books for the students to practice their characters and mathematics. When the students leave, the teacher doesn’t have much time but to remind the parents and students to bring back the homework books the next morning. It is a scene that plays out every day at thi…
Following a two-week period of desk and field research, the Target Design an APP for left-behind children hackathon was held in Shanghai last weekend. Six student teams brainstormed for 24-hours straight to design an innovative APP that transforms the way migrant worker parents communicate with their children left behind in rural China. The outputs at the end of the 24-hour deadline were some h…
Last Saturday, we kicked off the first phase of our upcoming Target hackathon this June 2-3 where five student teams from leading Chinese, and one from the US, will spend 24 hours working to design an APP that will help migrant worker parents to stay better connected to their left-behind children. These training sessions act to engage the students in the challenge and to get them thinking more…
Last Saturday, Vincci Group and Collective Responsibility jointly held a training session in Chengdu for the upcoming real estate hackathon, where students design “The Educational Hub of Tomorrow”. Together with their mentors, six student teams from Sichuan University, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Southwest Jiaotong University, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu…
We are excited to announce our next hackathon, hosted by Target Corporation on June 2-3 in Shanghai, will bring student teams will work with executives from leading technology and design communities to create a mobile app that helps connect migrant workers parents and their left-behind children. Of the 277 million rural laborers who migrate hundreds of miles away from home to China’s cities in…
As you may have noticed by now, we at Collective Responsibility have a special place in our hearts for migrants. Be it through our reports, blog posts, or profiles, we are devoted to understanding this population of people in large part because “they” are the mega trend that will test the limits of our systems and it is “they” that we need to be planning for when we look at how cities are built, f…
A family incident brought her to Shanghai, and she hopes to find a change of scene and some distraction that can help her out of the sadness. Back at home, she owned a small convenience store, but now in Shanghai, she’s one of the millions of migrant workers bringing prosperity to the city. It is a change of scene that did not come easy, and may not have brought the better life she had hoped fo…
This latest installment in our “Hope and Opportunity” article series discusses migrant worker trends with regards to children in rural China. When thousands of political and business leaders and experts gathered to discuss major economic, political, and social issues at China's recent Two Sessions, one of the most eye-catching and debatable topics raised was the current situation and futures of…
This is the latest installment in our "Hope and Opportunity" article series discussing migrant worker trends in Shanghai. While the world debates the chances of robots replacing human labor and the Trump administration promotes the idea that China's "cheap labor" have stolen American jobs, on the factory floors, the conversations are quite different. Factory managers are wondering why labor poo…
With an increased number of reports and discussions focused on the impact of automation on jobs, there is a clear (and growing) concern in many areas of the world. It is a concern that we first studied last year as part of our work with the ILO in creating the Future of Work report. This concern, at the time, was seen as misplaced in the minds of many of the executives and factory owners we spoke…
At the beginning of 2016, we interviewed more than 100 migrant workers in Shanghai. We listened to their bittersweet life stories. One of the stories, in particular, touched our hearts. Check out the video below, and the following article explaining China's unique migration phenomenon. This is a story about 200 yuan and a dream. "Chunyun" refers to the travel season for the Spring Fest…
"There are more than 9 million left-behind children in rural China, according to the latest figure announced on Wednesday. But compared to the previous number, 52 million left-behind children have apparently disappeared." Migrants provide the lifeblood for many economies, and nowhere is this truer than in China. As China's industrial revolution took hold, millions of migrant workers floode…
In an historical decision last week that shook the world, the United Kingdom voted through referendum to "Brexit", or leave the European Union, giving rise to numerous political, economic, and social implications. The social implications were already visible on a personal level over the weekend, as many people living in the UK — particularly ethnic minorities and foreign workers — have experienced…
