Migration and neighbourhood trust: Evidence from urban China

Abstract

Neighbourhood outcomes of migration have drawn considerable scholarly attention. Previous studies consider neighbourhood trust an indicator of social integration or social resources, revealing inconclusive findings regarding the effects of migration. Unlike previous studies, we view neighbourhood trust as a lifestyle feature. Combining urbanism theory and a typology of trust, we argue that migration causes a reduction in migrants’ neighbourhood trust through the assimilation of the urbanism lifestyle. We provide nationwide empirical evidence of the causal relationship between migration and neighbourhood trust and reveal the underlying mechanism. Our study identifies this relationship in urban China by applying a difference-in-differences empirical strategy and using the China Family Panel Survey. The results show that migration lowers neighbourhood trust levels by 0.473 from a sample mean of 6.692. We find that the declining effect is greater for rural–urban migrants than for within-urban migrants, and it is greater for rural–urban migrants who acquire urban hukou than for those who do not. We also show that rural–urban migration leads to an increase in trust in strangers. Together, these results support our hypothesis that the assimilation of the urbanism lifestyle is a critical mechanism through which migration undermines neighbourhood trust.