The governance of wage arrears for rural migrant workers is not only related to the fairness and accessibility of labor income,but also an inevitable requirement for achieving common prosperity for all people.By sorting out the policy evolution of the governance of wage arrears for rural migrant workers in China,the paper constructs analytical framework based on historical institutionalism,to explain the motivation and logic of policy evolution and explore the organic relationship between the two.In terms of evolution moti-vation,the central and local governments,rural migrant workers,employment enterprises and other action sub-jects have promoted the joint force of the relationship through synchronic adjustment;and the direction adjust-ment and intensity cohesion of the relationship joint force have led to the continuous evolution of the wage ar-rears governance policy.In terms of evolution logic,the path dependences including high-level promotion,rigid regulation and weak support,shaping inner regularity through diachronic reconfiguration;and the cou-pling of gradual continuation regularity and iterative upgrading regularity make the policy maintain consistent pattern of progress in stability and innovation in change.Between motivation and logic,there are mutual-complementary in question explanation and mutual-facilitation in influence path.This study not only makes marginal contributions at the level of policy analysis,providing common lessons for understanding the evolu-tion of livelihood policies in the Chinese scenario,but also clarifies the direction of policy optimization,which is conductive to building a solid policy support for the integration of rural migrant workers into common pros-perity.