Tracking the role of self‐employment on perceptions of citizenship: Evidence from urban migrant workers in China

Abstract

AbstractSelf‐employment is an essential driver of economic growth and societal well‐being. While previous studies have examined various consequences of self‐employed activities, little attention has been paid to how self‐employment affects citizenship perceptions among urban migrant workers. This paper seeks to fill this gap by distinguishing between own‐account workers and employers with hired employees. Using data from the 2017 China Migrant Dynamic Survey, we find that migrants who are employers or work on their own account are more likely to perceive themselves as citizens of their city of residence than wage earners. The size of the effect is much larger for employers than for own‐account workers. We also find that self‐employment can be linked to migrants' perceptions of citizenship via three pathways—individual income, type of housing (owned or rented accommodation) and social security. Our results are robust to employing the conditional mixed process estimator and nonparametric matching method to address endogeneity concerns. Our findings highlight the importance of the role that migrant entrepreneurship plays in reforming the current urban household registration system in China. The paper also has implications for other countries worldwide to cope with the group of marginalized immigrants by emphasizing the form of entrepreneurship.