Research on the Development Ability of Ecological Migrants in Ningxia (China)

Abstract

The main purpose of ecological migrations in China is to rebuild ecological system, help migrants out of extreme poor living environment and improve their life quality. However, due to the living environment and production conditions of the migrants have changed dramatically after resettlement, coupled with the conservative thinking and inability to adapt to the new environment, the problem of how to improve the development ability of migrants becomes more and more urgent to solve. The purpose of the present paper is to evaluate the development ability of migrants by taking the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region as an example. Based on an in-depth interview survey and questionnaire survey data, collected during a wide-scale field research of 201 valid questionnaires in five typical resettled villages, using fuzzy mathematical method, it was found out that the overall development ability of ecological migration in Ningxia is 0.4887, increased by 36.93% over five years, compared to the initial assumption value “0â€. The results show that the relocation significantly improved the development ability of the migrants, but is not able to completely change their poor production and living conditions. This finding will give the related government agencies, local management authorities a strong insight about the ways which can help and support the immigrants improve their development abilities.