They make up three-quarters of Shenzhen's workforce - and unlike their parents, many would like to settle down there.
Yet like their forebears, they are forced to work long hours to earn the means to support families back home in their villages. And they are not the delicate flowers, unable to work under pressure, that some employers and sociologists have painted them as; rather, they are suffering the effects of excessive overtime, poor factory conditions and a lack of companionship outside the workplace.
So say many of the twenty-somethings among 5,000-plus workers questioned for a myth-busting survey about the lives and labours of Shenzhen's migrant workforce. The survey was prompted after 13 suicide attempts by young Foxconn workers in the first five months of the year, which raised questions about working conditions at its factories.
The younger generation of migrant workers, contrary to popular belief, were found to be just as hard-working and no more selfish than their elders in the survey.
Ninety per cent of the twenty-somethings polled said they worked long hours. And more than half said they were forced to work far longer than the legal limits allowed because they were on very low basic salaries.
The average salary for a young migrant worker in Shenzhen is 1,800 yuan (HK$2,050) a month - including overtime. That's about 47 per cent of the average income in the city last year.
About four-fifths of that income is spent on basic daily expenses such as food, accommodation and transport, the workers said.