The notion of social exclusion, which originated in France, has become increasingly significant among Chinese scholars in recent years and is now an important angle for research on socially disadvantaged groups. This paper reviews the social exclusion of young rural-urban migrant workers and its characteristics in terms of social insurance based on interviews conducted in Hangzhou, a coastal city in China. The research findings indicate that the social exclusion of these workers during the urban employment process is a result of total and structural surplus in the Chinese labor market. Such exclusion is further intensified by systemic problems in the social insurance system and by problems in its regulation and implementation. Based on these results, this paper argues that the social exclusion of Chinese rural-urban migrant workers is different from the new poverty in the West: it is intake exclusion within the labor market in the context of globalization. In China's present socio-economic environment, informal employment, which has resulted in the social exclusion of this population, still has a positive effect on both rural-urban migrant workers and the wider society. As a result, measures that address the problem of social exclusion should also place more emphasis on the development of the social insurance system and the use of investment policies, including human capital investment, to facilitate the empowerment of the target group and achieve the goal of social insurance for all. © 2009 A B Academic Publishers.

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