【正文】
eat deal of attention from both policy makers and academics alike. Many recent studies have investigated various aspects of such an important issue. Nevertheless, an important debate in the ruralurban migration literature the role of the informal sector in the process of ruralurban migration has not been examined in the context of the Chinese experience. This paper intends to ?ll in this gap. There may be two important reasons which have led to the controversy. One is the conceptual confusion. While the de?nition of ‘informal’ activities ranges from ‘selling newspapers’ to ‘selfemployment in small business’, it is possible that different activities play different roles in the processes of ruralurban migration. Another reason may be that the role the informal sector plays depends heavily on the stage of economic development and institutional settings of the economy. Countries at different stage of economic development and with different institutional settings may experience considerable differences in this regard. The controversial issue of the role played by the informal sector in absorbing ruralurban migrants has attracted great interest from economists. Over the decades, economists from both sides of the debate have been trying to prove their arguments both theoretically and empirically. This controversy is probably caused by two factors. The ?rst is conceptual confusion. Although ‘informal sector’ is a monly used term in development economics, the basic characteristics of this sector are described as ‘low wage’, ‘small and familybased’, ‘freedom of entry’, ‘lack of a stable employeremployee relationship’ and ‘being ignored by the authorities’ . The ILO (1972) de?ned the informal sector as being characterized by: (a) ease of entry。 國際勞工組織( 1972 年)定義民營部門的特點(diǎn): (一)易于進(jìn)入; (二)對本 地資源的依賴; (三)企業(yè)家族所有權(quán); (四)企業(yè)的經(jīng)營規(guī)模較??; (五)勞動密集,使用適應(yīng)技術(shù); (六)在正規(guī)學(xué)校系統(tǒng)中獲得技能; (七)較少管制及競爭性的市場; 第二個(gè)可能會引致辯論的因素是有關(guān)民營部門的作用,每個(gè)國家都有自己的經(jīng)濟(jì)發(fā)展方式和獨(dú)特的機(jī)構(gòu)設(shè)置,這些差異使得這一問題涉及到非正規(guī)部門是否在農(nóng)村向城市移民中發(fā)揮了重要作用。 在移民文學(xué)中,民營部門的作用是一個(gè)有爭議的問題。 The interests of these individual movers as well as of the rural and urban munities of which they are a part and to which they make important contributions can best be served by policies that take account of the needs of the resident populations in both locations as well as those who move between them. To be successful, such policies require that we recognize and give attention to