Seminar on “Rural-urban labour migration: implications for employment and social insurance policies”, Beijing, 23-24 Oct 2006

This seminar was jointly organised by the OECD Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs (DELSA) and the Chinese Ministry of Labour and Social Security (MOLSS). It gathered 16 OECD participants representing the Secretariat, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Sweden and the United States, TUAC (Trade Union Advisory Committee), and about 22 Chinese participants from MOLSS.

The seminar covered a range of policy implications relating to domestic migration in China and international migration in the OECD area, with a first session focused on migrants’ labour market integration and two subsequent sessions devoted to the related goals of formalising informal employment and extending the social insurance coverage.

The discussions suggested that OECD and Chinese experience can be fruitfully compared and that it is possible to draw policy lessons on employment services, labour inspectorates, tax enforcement and social insurance administration. But the seminar also touched on more general and fundamental questions, for example concerning the general scope for policy making in response to large-scale migration pressures.

China’s rural-urban migration is unique in scale, pace, geographic distances and spatial imbalances involved. Migrants number about 200 million of which 120 million permanently in non-farm jobs outside their home villages.

Concluding Remarks by John P. Martin, Director, OECD Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs