The New Urbanisation Plan and permanent urban settlement of migrants in Chongqing, China

Abstract

AbstractFor over 30 years, urbanisation in China went along with policies that discouraged migrants from permanently settling in cities. Since 2014, however, policies have shifted towards the encouragement of the urban settlement of migrants. This change has triggered new academic research aimed at re‐understanding the urban integration. Findings of this paper are based on a survey conducted in Chongqing, the first municipality to implement elements of China's New Urbanisation Plan. The focus was on the preference for permanently settling in the city among migrants. Situations before and after the policy transition have been compared, while special attention was given to the impact of 2 key institutional factors—hukou reform and access to public rental housing. The other key to the investigation was whether migrants who have accessed public rental housing seek to buy such housing in order to eventually achieve permanent urban settlement. Results show that the policy transition has had positive effects on the preference of migrants for permanent urban settlement. However, the influence of public rental housing occupancy was quantitatively limited and the impact of the hukou reform has not yet fully crystalized. The policy transition has brought certain equity to disadvantaged and intra‐provincial rural–urban migrants, but this in turn has had negative effects on more advantaged and inter‐provincial migrants. The latter categories appeared to have fewer incentives to approach permanent urban settlement via accessing public rental housing.