Social integration of migrants across Chinese neighbourhoods

Abstract

Existing studies on migrant social integration in China are often focused on urban villages. Very few have explored across different types of neighbourhood. Drawing on the 2014 China Migrants Dynamic Survey, we find that migrants who live in ‘commodity housing’ neighbourhoods have achieved a higher level of social integration in all the dimensions of socio-economic achievement, neighbourly interaction and social relationships with the city. Migrants living in urban and rural villages manage to achieve better economic integration than migrants living in factory dormitories and old neighbourhoods in the central city. However, migrants in these villages show a lower level of social integration. The findings reveal that urban and rural villages as migrant enclaves serve a stepping-stone for migrants to earn an income but do not support migrants to eventually progress into better social integration. By revealing different levels of social integration, the Chinese case seems to suggest a process of spatial assimilation through which migrants living in more mainstream and formal housing with the locals become better integrated. However, such a process does not really happen as many migrants are stuck in the informal housing of villages. That migrant enclaves demonstrate a lower level of integration suggests that a path of segmented assimilation did not exist. That is, migrants could not find a path to integrate into the city in these enclaves.