Urban Residents' Prejudice and Integration of Rural Migrants into Urban China

Abstract

Using data from a 2011 national household survey, this paper examines the factors shaping urban residents' prejudice toward rural-to-urban migrants and the impacts of prejudice on rural migrants' integration into urban communities. The results show that urban residents with higher education and household income report stronger prejudice. Also, urban residents with urban hukou at birth, are more prejudiced toward rural migrants. Given that hukou status at birth is tied to the parental hukou status, this result implies that prejudice can transfer across generations. With regards to the impacts on rural migrants' integration, prejudice reduces their perceived social standing and increases the number of livelihood problems encountered. On the other hand, prejudice is associated with stronger self-identification as an urbanite and more willingness to interact with urban residents. There are two possible explanations. First, in a prejudicial society, there may exist a strong negative connotation associated with the identity as a ruralite, which causes rural migrants not to rather consider themselves as urbanites. Second, since urban residents of high socio-economic status report stronger prejudice, rural migrants may want to network with those urban residents, who can provide assistance in job search and access to government resources.