＊本书的研究曾经登过财新媒体以及南方周报
 
中国在这最近三十年内出现大量的农民工从村庄移民到都市，导致有超过三千五百万名第二代的流动儿童住在大都市的边缘。作者执行了从未见过的纵向研究，从上海市政府开放公立学校给农民工的子女后开始观察这些孩子从中学一路到他們进入劳动市场。作者使用许多的研究数据去跟踪这些孩子的成长，研究他們在现在的经济以及社会环境如何竞争。作者探讨了这些孩子们的认同感、受教力以及身份。他們大部分都必然进入劳工的命运，但这些孩子是否有自己的梦想以及期待？作者利用上海这个充满希望及国际化的大都市作为背景来捕捉这些年轻人的独特经历。
 
关于作者：
Minghua Ling是香港中文大学中国学研究中心的副教授。
 
好评：
"Ranging across all the main sites of social life – work, school, leisure, reproduction – Minhua Ling's comprehensive, meticulous, and valuable ethnography gives a worm's-eye view of life for Shanghai's second-generation migrant youth. On the city's edges and living in insecure, often ramshackle homes, they seek to shape a meaningful life and sense of personal worth under multiple pressures of marginalization, but they are the fastest-growing segment of a soon-to-be mostly migrant city. This picture of Shanghai shows us some of the results of the world's largest-ever human migration and the likely future dimensions of suffering and belonging in mega-cities everywhere."
—Paul Willis, author of Learning to Labour
 
"Minhua Ling's sensitive, fine-grained narrative of what she terms 'the inconvenient generation' affords a periscopic vision of ongoing state-structured discrimination against the children of rural migrants as this second generation comes of age. The reader can only ache over her poignant presentation of cosmopolitan dreams and dashed hopes as these young people's onward avenues remain blocked, some three and a half decades since their forebears set forth for the cities. The author's sharp eye, analytical acuity, and compassion have produced an engrossing, empathetic chronicle."
—Dorothy J. Solinger, author of Contesting Citizenship in Urban China
 
"Based on an in-depth longitudinal study, The Inconvenient Generation offers an original and riveting ethnographic account of the lived experience of second-generation Chinese migrant youth in a rapidly changing global Shanghai. Beautifully crafted, it is a poignant story about coming of age as 'liminal subjects,' who are caught in China's persistent rural/urban divide and yet strive to attain their dreams and aspirations while facing an unforgiving reality shaped by the urban citizenship regime, a massive demand for manual labor, and segmented inclusion."
—Li Zhang, author of Strangers in the City and In Search of Paradise