Border effect on migrants’ settlement pattern: Evidence from China

Abstract

Migrants' settlement is an emerging topic, especially in underdeveloped countries with massive internal migration. This study is a response to the pressing need of theorizing the emerging migration issue and enriching the conceptual approach in migration studies. From the perspective of the border effect, we propose a conceptual model of population redistribution. It reveals that the border effect on migrants' settlement pattern presents an inverted U-shaped change that the migrants' settlement pattern evolves from low-level balance to high-level balance across space. Besides, border effect plays different roles in settlement patterns of inter-regional migrants, intra-regional migrants, and the difference between inter-regional migrants and intra-regional migrants. Using an extended Barro regression, China's case validates the Barrier-Ⅱ stage in the conceptual model, in which the border effect tends to be weakened and there is a more even distribution of migrants who settle in the destination across space at the regional level. Economic disparity and social/cultural differences produce the border effect, and the border plays a more influential role in the distribution of the difference between inter-provincial migrants and intra-provincial migrants.