Rural-urban Migration In China Research Articles

Urban Unemployment Duration Analysis in Post-Reform China

We link China’s accession to the WTO with the unemployment duration of urban jobseekers. Using data from the Rural Urban Migration in China (RUMiC) of a survey conducted in early 2008, we construct an inflow sample of those who started a period of joblessness between January 2002 and December 2007 to estimate the unemployment duration for local urban jobseekers. Deploying the Cox Proportional Hazards and Accelerated Failure Time models, we find reduced trade policy uncertainty significantly shortens unemployment duration, with hazard-rate varying across internal in-migrants and urban natives, due to variations in job accessibility and reservation wages.

Dynamics of Rural-Urban Migration in China: A Decade of Economic Impact

Dynamics of Rural-Urban Migration in China: A Decade of Economic Impact

The social integration of rural migrants in urban China: The effect of hometown land tenure

AbstractWhile rural migrants living in different housing tenures present significantly variegated levels of social integration, little is known about how land tenure in their place of origin affects their integration into the host cities. Using the 2017 China Migrants Dynamic Survey, we identified three dimensions of social integration: (1) permanent settlement intention, (2) cultural integration and (3) psychological integration. We find that migrants do not feel psychological isolation; their settlement intention is lower as a more realistic judgement of prospects. Their cultural integration is even lower, indicating it is a long‐term process. Migrants with land farming by relatives and friends and land subleasing to private are more socially integrated, while hiring someone to cultivate the land, leaving land uncultivated and other land disposal methods reduces migrants' social integration. Furthermore, land subleasing led to stronger psychological integration, even after controlling for the potential endogeneity issue. It weakens their attachment to their hometowns and increases their income to achieve stronger integration. The effect is more salient in the migrants of the new generation, in second‐tier cities and in the digital economy sector.

Adapt or not: A comparison of rural migrant adaptation in two cities in China.

Leading with the principle of 'people-oriented urbanization,' the adaptation of rural migrants in urban China has attracted increasing concerns from policy-makers and scholars. Today, China has proceeded to a new stage of urbanization. Many rural migrants prefer moving to cities near their home villages rather than to large cities, reflecting the changes in migration patterns and expectations of rural migrants. Although migrant adaptation has been repeatedly investigated in academia, researchers tend to address the topic in one host setting, while migrant adaptation in diverse urban settings has rarely been compared. This paper seeks to fill this research gap via a survey conducted in two cities with different urban settings in Jiangsu. The rural migrant adaptation experiences in the two cities are systematically compared. Our statistical results show that economic structure and living costs, on the one hand, and local regulations and socio-cultural environments, on the other hand, determine rural migrant adaptation experiences in different urban settings. Despite abundant employment opportunities in more-developed cities, the high living costs, working pressure, and strict institutional schemes significantly hamper rural migrant adaptation. In less-developed cities, limited employment opportunities and conservative socio-cultural environments hinder rural migrants from adapting in host societies. Our findings suggest that the governments of different cities need to tailor strategies to assist rural migrants in adapting in urban communities.

Unskilled Migration and Vertical Disintegration: Theory and Evidence from China

This paper studies how rural-urban migration in China affects the vertical disintegration of firms. We construct a theoretical model and find that the inflow of rural migrants increases the output of firms in urban areas. This leads to a higher degree of vertical disintegration of firms due to the decreasing returns to scale. We also find that the wage of skilled workers relative to that of unskilled workers in urban areas is increased with rural migrants as the vast majority of rural migrants are unskilled. Our empirical findings are consistent with our model predictions using China’s population census and manufacturing firm-level data in 2005.

Sense of community and residential well-being among rural-urban migrants in China

This paper aims to provide an empirical prediction of residential well-being (RWB) and sense of community (SoC) among Chinese rural-urban migrants (RUMs). Multiple linear regressions are used with survey data derived from a representative sample of 15 migrant villages located in three major urban regions of China in order to evaluate the contributions of socioeconomic factors, living conditions, and neighborhood conditions to the SoC score and RWB score. The majority of the sample consists of middle-aged, married men who live in shared housing, are registered in the agricultural Hukou (household registration) system, and have subpar housing. Empirical analyses show that, after adjusting for socioeconomic factors, living conditions, and community neighborhood conditions, Hukou status (urban or rural) significantly influences the RWB score rather than the SoC score. In the simultaneous equation models, the following factors can predict the SoC score and RWB score: age, gender, educational attainment, home ownership, number of housing facilities, monthly household income, number of living rooms, number of problem-solving channels, and converted residences. The SoC score and RWB score have a moderately strong correlation. Therefore, improving the living, institutional, socioeconomic, and neighborhood conditions will help to improve the SoC and RWB of RUMs.

Does Resettlement Settled the Poverty?Poverty Alleviation Resettlement Programme and Multidimensional Poverty in Rural China

Poverty Alleviation Resettlement is a key component of Chinas Five-Batch policy in Targeted Poverty Alleviation. This work introduces the history of the PAR programme in China and the current phase of work arrangement. It presents findings from the literature on internal and rural-urban migration in China and other countries as well as some of the experiences and problems faced by the previous poverty alleviation resettlement projects. In addition, it attempts to build a simple DiD model to determine the impact of participation in the PAR programmes on the multidimensional poverty status of the poor in China, taking subjective and objective factors into account. It finally illustrates some shortcomings of this research for future refinement.

Rural–urban migration and urban identity differentiation in China

ABSTRACT Previous studies on the social identity of rural-urban migrants in China have often neglected the fact that migration is highly selective. Consequently, the findings generally suffer from survival bias. To overcome this problem, we construct an analytical framework to differentiate six subgroups: rural residents with no migration experience, returned migrants, rural-urban migrants, new urban residents through elite approaches, new urban residents through policy dividends, and urban natives. Employing logistic regression, propensity score matching, and propensity score-based marginal mean weighting through stratification, this study analyzes the 2013 Chinese General Social Survey data and confirms that the urban identity of rural residents, rural-urban migrants, new urban residents, and urban natives changed from weak to strong. The sources of urban identity can be ascribed to three aspects: urban experience, hukou conversion, and generational replacement, among which hukou conversion is the most important. The findings indicate that incorporating rural-urban migrants whose identity status may have changed into the analysis helps overcome the problem of survival bias. This method can be further used to reveal other issues related to rural-urban migration in urbanizing China. Moreover, theories concerning international migrants in western countries should be critically appraised before being applied to explain the social integration of internal migrants in different social contexts.

Hukou Reform and the “Luohu” of Rural Migrants in Urban China

Along with a series of reforms of the household registration, or the hukou system, there has been a sustained call for its reforms to further integrate rural migrants into cities and sustain the national strategy of urbanization. Nevertheless, does hukou still matter? Is it still a major obstacle to the inclusive development of post-reform urban China? Recently, the effect of the hukou system and its reforms has become a debatable topic. To address the question, in this article, we examine the “luohu” of rural migrants, i.e., rural people who work and/or live in the city obtaining urban hukou, to evaluate the effects of hukou reforms. We argue, along with the improvement of China’s social security system in both urban and rural areas, as well as the increased rights of rural migrants in cities, that the gap between the “value” of urban and rural hukou is decreasing: the boundaries set between urban and rural territories have been diminished; meanwhile, the intentions of rural migrants to luohu in the city have declined. This dilemma indicates that the impact of hukou system per se is fading, which is closely linked to the reforms of other social policies such as welfare and pension systems. As such, to promote the integration of rural migrants in Chinese cities, the focus of China’s hukou reforms should shift from the registration system to more inclusive social policies.

What Influences Family Migration Decision of China’s New Generation Rural-urban Migrants? A Multilevel Logistic Regression Analysis

The massive scale of new-generation rural-urban migrants in China has attracted extensive scholarly attention in recent years. While previous studies on China’s rural migrant workers focus on migrants’ individual settlement intentions, migrant’s family migration decision-making and the intergenerational differences between the old-generation migrants and new-generation migrants are underexplored. Based on the data of 2017 China Migrants Dynamic Survey, this paper adopts a multilevel logistic regression approach to explore family and destination factors influencing family migration decision of China’s new generation rural migrant workers. The empirical results reveal that both the migrants’ family and destination attributes significantly influence their family migration decision. The demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of family have been pivotal factors underlying family migration decision of China’s new generation rural-urban migrants, while 16.9% of the chances is explained by between-destination differences. Self-employed migrants with housing properties in host cities, long migration duration and high-income level are more likely to migrate with their family members. Yet, the possibility of family migration is found to be significantly and negatively correlated with the age, education level, number of children and inter-provincial mobility of the new generation migrant workers. In addition, new generation rural-urban migrants’ family migration is more likely to be found in cities with service-oriented industry structure, better environmental quality, and higher hukou barriers which is possibly related to more job opportunities. These research findings not only complement the existing literature on China’s new generation rural-urban migrants, but also have important policy implications for reforming hukou system and enhancing social integration of rural-to-urban migrant population.

Parents' pension eligibility and migrant consumption in urban China: Evidence from a quasi‐experiment

AbstractThis article analyzes data from the 2009 and 2014 waves of the Survey on Rural Urban Migration in China (RUMiC) to investigate the impact of parents' pension status on migrants' consumption in cities. Exploiting the introduction of the new rural pension scheme (NRPS), we perform a difference‐in‐differences (DID) analysis. We find that having a parent in a rural area that is pension eligible increases migrants' consumption level by 9.4%. However, this effect is constrained to survival consumption. Furthermore, the positive impact of parents' pension eligibility is more pronounced for migrants who earn a lower income, receive less education, suffer from poorer health, have stronger economic ties with their parents, and have a parent in poorer health. Our results suggest that improving rural social welfare has a spillover effect on urban consumption.

Becoming Urban Citizens: A Three-Phase Perspective on the Social Integration of Rural-Urban Migrants in China.

This article attempts to provide an integrated conceptual framework for understanding how rural–urban migrants in China integrate into urban society. We propose a three-phase conceptual framework in which the social integration of rural–urban migrants is categorized into circular migration, urban settlement, and urban integration. We argue that the three phases differ with respect to the aims of migration, the identity of migrants, the key dimensions of social integration, the role of government, and the hukou policy. While the transition from circular migration to urban settlement is an outcome of economic development and change in demographic structure, as reflected by the economic conditions of rural–urban migrants, welfare expansion also plays a critical role during this process. We further hypothesize that the transition from urban settlement to urban integration will be a result of the social interaction between rural–urban migrants and local urbanites, within which social capital and cultural factors are vital. Since most rural–urban migrants are currently at the phase of urban settlement, we suggest that the Chinese government should enlarge welfare provisions to support their settlement in cities. This study contributes to improving the understanding of how to facilitate social integration of internal migrants in developing countries.

Flowing sense of place: Perceptions of host city impacting on city attachment of rural-urban migrants in China

The increasing population mobility in the context of globalization has greatly reshaped people’s cognition and sentiment toward their places of residence. China has witnessed an unprecedented surge in internal migration from rural to urban areas since the mid-1980 s. However, limited by multiple barriers, rural-urban migrants in China face predicaments in establishing a psychological bond with their host cities. This study develops a conceptual framework that links rural-urban migrants’ urban experiences and attitudes toward both original and urban lifestyles to their city attachment. Using a nationwide survey and structural equation modeling, this study finds that (1) while willingness of social interaction with urban locals has a positive effect on the urban attachment of rural-urban migrants, perceived social exclusion depresses the urban attachment of rural-urban migrants. (2) Loyalty to one’s original lifestyle is not significantly associated with the urban attachment of rural-urban migrants, whereas preference for the urban lifestyle is positively associated with the urban attachment of rural-urban migrants. (3) Willingness of social interaction with urban locals and perceived social exclusion can affect the urban attachment of rural-urban migrants by influencing their attitudes toward the urban lifestyle. (4) perceived social exclusion is positively related to loyalty to the original lifestyle for rural-urban migrants from cities located in northern area of China, while it is negatively related to loyalty to the original lifestyle for rural-urban migrants from cities located in the central and southern areas. Our study broadens the research on the urban attachment of rural-urban migrants and suggests that migrants’ experiences in the host society and attitudes toward the lifestyle of the host society are significant in shaping their place attachment to the host society. Furthermore, the process by which rural-urban migrants form meaningful relations with the city can occur through the influence of urban experiences on attitudes toward the urban lifestyle.

Erratum to: Impact of a guaranteed minimum income program on rural-urban migration in China

Erratum to: Impact of a guaranteed minimum income program on rural-urban migration in China

Intergenerational gendered livelihoods: Marriage, matchmaking and Rural-Urban migration in China

This paper uses marriage as a lens to highlight norms, customs, identities and shared values that shape livelihoods and give meaning to intergenerational and gendered practices at the individual and household level. Drawing on feminist contributions to understanding power differences between women and men and between generations, this paper shows that while livelihood may be seen as involving mainly the economic and material aspects of living, it is equally a matter of how people pursue important goals in life such as marital formation, and how these goals are situated in social, cultural, historical and locational contexts. Based on interviews in Anhui and Sichuan provinces, I highlight how intergenerational livelihoods are influenced by gendered ideology and practice, in particular transactional marriage, parents’ and children’s responsibilities in enabling marital formation and lineage, and the pursuit of rural-urban migration to enhance men’s competitiveness in the marriage market. I foreground the voices and narratives of rural Chinese and rural-urban migrants, who share how they live their lives, resources that they have access to, strategies that they pursue, and their goals and desired outcomes that are situated in relevant social, cultural and spatial contexts. Quotes from interviewees underscore the deep-rooted patriarchy that has manifested itself through marriage, especially the traditions of patrilocal exogamy and transactional matchmaking. Specifically, I draw attention to the roles of house-building and bride price in marital formation, and their implications for rural-urban migration as a long-term household strategy and a way of life. By doing so, this paper emphasizes the social and cultural contexts, in particular gender and intergenerational relations, for research on rural-urban migration.

To settle but not convert hukou among rural migrants in urban China: How does family-level eligibility for citizenship benefits matter?

Since 2010, although Chinese governments have continued to relax hukou barriers and reduce the gap between rural and urban hukou, migrants are less enthusiastic than expected in taking the opportunity to convert to urban-hukou. However, understandings of such reversed attitudes have been insufficient, especially from an international perspective. This study thus brings theories of naturalisation and citizenship to examining hukou conversion. Using the China Migrants Dynamic Survey of 2017 (the only year that also investigated migrant families with local-hukou spouses), the study applies cross-classified multi-level logistic regressions to estimate how eligibility for exclusive benefits of urban citizenship at the family level affects rural-to-urban migrants' decisions on hukou conversion. Unlike previous research, this study examines explicitly rural-to-urban migrants who planned to settle in destination cities, which helps to extend understanding of the gap between the de facto settlement and the institutional settlement (hukou conversion) among Chinese migrants. Moreover, the study fills the knowledge gap regarding the impact of family-level citizenship dynamics on hukou conversion decisions. Unlike in the international context where naturalised citizens and homeownership at the family-level promote naturalisation of other family members, we find that the family holding of local urban-hukou and ownership of formal housing suppress hukou conversion of migrant spouses, especially in less attractive cities and for migrants who feel either insecure in the job market or economically independent. The study argues that homeownership and having a local urban-hukou family member, both of which promote family-level access to local exclusive urban citizenship benefits, have a ‘protection effect’ which enables rural-to-urban migrant families to maximise their opportunities in rural hometowns and host cities without sacrificing rural citizen rights in exchange for urban-hukou. We predict an increasing emergence of such a family context and discuss the motivations of the Chinese state in these current policies concerning hukou conversion.

Labour market and wage inequalities between permanent rural migrants and urban-born residents in China

ABSTRACT This study provides some of the first empirical evidence on the role of the labour market in determining individual-level wages and the consequent wage inequalities. Unlike traditional earnings equations that focus on human capital factors, this study follows recent wage theory, the Nash bargaining model, and finds that not only human capital but also the labour market are important factors in determining individual-level wages. Further, this study examines wage inequalities between urban-born workers and permanent rural migrant workers, who constitute a sizable part of all rural migrants in urban China but have been ignored in previous academic studies. Different from temporary rural migrants examined in previous studies, permanent rural migrants share the same citizenship rights and social welfare as urban-born workers. However, we still find that these permanent migrants (classified as talent, land, and ‘supported’ migrants) face disadvantages in acquiring high wages. Using a developed version of the two-fold Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition based on our theoretical model, we find that the wage inequalities between permanent rural migrants and urban residents are caused by both the workers’ education and labour market tightness, as well as the father’s employment status, housing prices, and other factors.

City Size and Permanent Settlement Intention: Evidence from Rural-Urban Migrants in China.

The location choice and livelihoods of rural-urban migrants are critical to the sustainable development of cities. By using data from the China Migrants Dynamic Survey (CMDS) in 2017, this paper extant the Rosen–Roback’s model by adding factors of urban social network and air pollution to the function of the individual utility of migrants. Both the Probit Model and IV estimates imply evidence of an inverse U-shaped pattern of city size and migrants’ permanent settlement in urban China. This view proves that Chinese migrants like to settle permanently in large cities, but not mega-cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai. The internal mechanism is explained by the agglomeration economies and the crowing effect brought by city size. In mega-cities, the attractiveness of the city caused by wage premium cannot offset the combined repulsive force caused by the high housing price, bad urban social network, air pollution, and health deterioration. It is worth noting that air pollution has a significant negative impact on the settlement intention of migrants, such as health conditions and precipitation. Besides, there is heterogeneity among high-skilled migrants and low-skilled migrants in different city sizes. Our findings enhance the understanding of “Escape from megacities” in China and have implications for the reform of the housing security system and the exploration of the urbanization path.

City Size, Family Migration, and Gender Wage Gap: Evidence from Rural-Urban Migrants in China

City Size, Family Migration, and Gender Wage Gap: Evidence from Rural-Urban Migrants in China

Resilience and Circularity: Revisiting the Role of Urban Village in Rural-Urban Migration in Beijing, China

Recent policies in China have encouraged rural-urban circular migration and an “amphibious” and flexible status of settlement, reacting against the recent risks of economic fluctuation in cities. Rural land, as a form of insurance and welfare, can handle random hazards, and the new Land Management Law guarantees that rural migrants who settle in the city can maintain their rights to farmland, homesteads, and a collective income distribution. Existing studies have pointed out that homeland tenure can reduce migrants’ urban settlement intentions (which is a self-reported subjective perception of city life). However, little is known about how the rural-urban circularity and rural tenure system (especially for those still holding hometown lands in the countryside) affect rural migrants’ temporary urban settlements (especially for those preferring to stay in informal communities in the host city). The existing studies on the urban villages in China have focused only on the side of the receiving cities, but have rarely mentioned the other side of this process, focusing on migrants’ rural land tenure issues in their hometowns. This study discusses the rationale of informality (the urban village) and attests to whether, and to what extent, rural migrants’ retention of their hometown lands can affect their tenure security choices (urban village or not) in Chinese metropolises such as Beijing. Binary logistic regression was conducted and the data analysis proved that rural migrants who kept their hometown lands, compared to their land-loss counterparts, were more likely to live in a Beijing urban village. This displays the resilience and circularity of rural-urban migration in China, wherein the rural migrant households demonstrate the “micro-family economy”, maintaining tenure security in their hometown and avoiding the dissipation of their family income in their destination. The Discussion and Conclusions sections of this paper refer to some policy implications related to maintaining the rural-urban dual system, protecting rural migrant land rights, and beefing up the “opportunity structure” (including maintaining the low-rent areas in metropolises such as Beijing) in the 14th Five Year Plan period.