Abstract: The floating elderlies (Lao piao zu) refers to the migrating elderlies who migrate to their children’s place to support their children and take care of their grandchildren. Drawing froms in-depth interviews with 15 representative cases of H community in Guangzhou, this study adopts the grounded theory approach and the ecosystem theory to identify factors that influence the elderly migrants’ self-worth through three-level coding. The influencing factors are categorized into five dimensions: physical fitness, life concept, family relationship, interpersonal relationship and social relations. Building on this foundation, professional social work methods are adopted at the micro level to improve the migrant elderlies’ sense of physical and psychological values by enhancing their learning ability, exercising their identity, and changing their irrational beliefs. At the meso-level, the focus is on strengthening migrant elderlies’ sense of family value and interpersonal value by reviewing the past and exploring their advantage potential. At the macro level, the aim is to enrich their social values by linking social resources and bolster social identity. These strategies are to enhance migrant elderlies’ self-worse and facilitate their better integration into urban life thus promote the harmonious development of the society.

Key words: the elderly migrants, ecological systems theory, self-worth, social work