Abstract:

 Population migration brings challenges to social governance of both inflow areas and of floating population’s places of origin. Based on the context of social management predicament of floating population’s places of origin，we analyzed the problems in and challenges to rural society governance posed by the increase of migrating workers which has made the rural areas in Jialing River Basin “empty nests” since 1990s. We found that the traditional rural social governance mechanism can no longer meet the requirements of the economic and social changes. Analyses also reveal that the weakening of traditional autonomy in the national construction is the cause of the dilemma. According to the current status of social and economic development，especially the structural changes of social interests，we put forward that in order to solve the problems it is necessary to reshape the culture of social autonomy in Jialing River Basin，and to reconstruct the local level government institutions and to establish new social governance mechanisms.

Key words: floating population, Jialing River Basin, empty nest, rural social governance, innovative social management mechanism