Sim Chi Yin reports in The Straits Times (Singapore):

They are smart, industrious and marginalised, huddling together for comfort.

Hordes of China’s underemployed or underpaid university graduates have formed squalid enclaves on the fringes of the country’s big cities, earning themselves the label yi zu or ‘ant tribe’.

As their ranks swell, some observers have warned of the dangers that a mass of young and frustrated people – doing jobs they are overqualified for – might pose to social stability.

Last month, several delegates at Beijing’s annual parliamentary session urged the government to build better housing for these graduates and to do more to help them find jobs.

There are a million ‘ants’ massed around major cities, with about 100,000 in Beijing alone, estimates sociologist Lian Si, who led a two-year study that was published in a book last September.

A typical ‘ant’ hails from rural China, is a graduate of a non-brand-name university aged between 22 and 29, and earns no more than 2,000 yuan (S $414) a month working long hours as an insurance salesman, computer technician or waiter.