Abstract Chinese government has been practicing the eco-immigration since 1983, helping people to get rid of poverty and improving the eco-environment in some poorest areas of China. Eco-immigration is an important way to govern and protect China's ecological environment. Under such circumstances, immigrant areas are facing the issue of how to develop after relocation which has a special significance for both migration and immigration areas. Highly concerned by foreign scholars recently, tourist labor migration has already appeared currently, but is ignored by scholars in China. Taking Zhenbeipu of Yinchuan city in Ningxia, one of the earliest typical eco-immigration region, as an example, this paper systematically analyzes tourism migration and argues that it is important to make more people working in tourism industry in some eco-immigration regions because tourism labors can improve the level of production and living. The paper, first, defines the tourist labor migration, believing that many immigrants in Zhenbeipu belong to the scope of tourist labor, and then analyzes some factors influencing the transformation of tourist labor migration in Zhenbeipu, including policy, economic, cost and city, to find out the major problems involving in transformation of tourist labor migration in Zhenbeipu. The findings are as follows:1) the low quality of rural laborers; 2) the single direction of transformation; 3) the lack of the mechanism in training tourism laborers; 4) the insufficient understanding of transformation of tourist labor migration from tourism enterprises. Also, the paper shows the direction of transformation of tourist labor migration from geographical zone, professional and space dimension. Finally, the author puts forward four reasonable methods to tourist labor migration in Zhenbeipu, which are the extension of the tourism industry chain, establishing tourist labor training system, raising the level of urbanization, as well as strengthening policies and information services for tourist labor migration.
2009, Vol. 24 
