Urban Natives Research Articles

Accessibility and utilization of health-care services among rural–urban migrants in Ghana: A scoping review

Since the second half of the 20th century, internal migration patterns in Ghana have been dominated by movements from rural (or northern) to urban (or southern) areas. Numerous studies report wide socioeconomic gaps between the geographical north and south of Ghana, explaining the unidirectional movement in search of better opportunities. Differences in personal health profiles, values, and beliefs mean that internal migrants face a higher risk of ill health than urban natives. Compounding this issue is the barriers that impede their access to and utilization of health-care services. We synthesized evidence from existing literature to understand internal migrants’ access to and utilization of healthcare in Ghana, as well as their coping strategies. This review followed Arksey and O’Malley’s guidelines for conducting scoping reviews. We searched PubMed, EconLit, CINAHL, PsychINFO, and Medline (Ovid) electronic databases for studies published from January 2012 to June 2022. In addition, a manual literature search was conducted on Google by examining the reference lists of selected articles to identify other relevant studies. The majority of the studies (n = 12 [75%]) focused on female migrants, while 4 (25%) included both male and female migrants. This review identified several factors affecting access to health-care services for internal migrants in Ghana. These factors included infrastructural, financial, and language barriers, as well as long patient waiting times. Significantly, these barriers resulted in increased self-medication and self-diagnosis among internal migrants, leading to overall poor health outcomes. Based on the study findings, we propose a multidimensional approach to bridging the health access gap for internal migrants. This approach involves improving health system factors such as health service delivery, health workforce, availability of essential medicines, and health finance reforms to provide quality health-care services at affordable or no cost, while considering the socioeconomic and cultural conditions of the internal migrants.

Hukou reform and labor market outcomes of urban natives in China

Hukou reform and labor market outcomes of urban natives in China

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.

Hukou reform and labor market outcomes of urban natives in China

Hukou reform and labor market outcomes of urban natives in China

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.

Neighborhood social capital and self-rated mental health: Disparities between migrants and native residents in Beijing.

Although the impact of neighborhood social capital on mental health has long been recognized, the extent to which the impact differs between immigrants and local residents remains a puzzle. This study aims to bridge the gap by comparing internal migrants who are restricted by their household registration (hukou) status, and urban natives in China. Using self-rated mental health and social capital survey data collected in 26 neighborhoods in Beijing, this study examines the mental health outcomes of three types of neighborhood social capital, including social networks, shared norms and mutual trust, and social support. The study finds that the hukou status of immigrants moderates the effect of neighborhood social capital on mental health, and that the internal migrants in China experience less mental health benefit of neighborhood social capital than urban natives. Compared with urban natives, neighborhood social networks have less positive effect on migrants' mental health than that of urban natives. The findings suggest that policy makers can improve the mental health of migrants through social capital building on the premise of eliminating the restrictions of hukou system on the migrants' right to participate in neighborhood activities and to access neighborhood services.

Exploring sentiment divergence on migrant workers through the lens of Sina Weibo

PurposeSince the opening of China (aka, reform and opening-up), a great number of rural residents have migrated to large cities in the past 40 years. Such a one-way population inflow to urban areas introduces nontrivial social conflicts between urban natives and migrant workers. This study aims to investigate the most discussed topics about migrant workers on Sina Weibo along with the corresponding sentiment divergence.Design/methodology/approachAn exploratory-descriptive-explanatory research methodology is employed. The study explores the main topics on migrant workers discussed in social media via manual annotation. Subsequently, guided LDA, a semi-supervised topic modeling approach, is applied to describe the overall topical landscape. Finally, the authors verify their theoretical predictions with respect to the sentiment divergence pattern for each topic, using regression analysis.FindingsThe study identifies three most discussed topics on migrant workers, namely wage default, employment support and urban/rural development. The regression analysis reveals different diffusion patterns contingent on the nature of each topic. In particular, this study finds a positive association between urban/rural development and the sentiment divergence, while wage default exhibits an opposite relationship with sentiment divergence.Originality/valueThe authors combine unique characteristics of social media with well-established theories of social identity and framing, which are applied more to off-line contexts, to study a unique phenomenon of migrant workers in China. From a practical perspective, the results provide implications for the governance of urbanization-related social conflicts.

Local Ties, Trans-Local Ties, and Substance Use among Rural-to-Urban Migrants in China.

China has witnessed unprecedented rural-to-urban migration since the early 1980s. While trying to assimilate into the city, rural-to-urban migrants still maintain close ties with their home communities. This study examines how local ties and trans-local ties of rural-to-urban migrants affect their alcohol and tobacco use. Data were obtained from the 2016 and 2018 China Labor-force Dynamics Survey, a nationally representative sample of adults aged over 15 in 29 provinces in China. Participants included 1426 rural-to-urban migrant workers and 6438 urban residents in China. We found that compared to urban natives, rural-to-urban migrants had higher tobacco use prevalence (logit = 0.19, 95% CI = [0.03, 0.35]; p < 0.05) and more frequent alcohol use (logit = 0.27, 95% CI = [0.11, 0.42]; p < 0.001) after adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics. Migrants with more local social ties engaged in more frequent drinking (having >10 local friends vs. having 0 local friends: logit = 0.58, [0.10, 1.06], p < 0.05), whereas trans-local ties were not a significant correlate. In contrast, migrants who returned to their hometown more times (an indicator of trans-local ties) were more likely to be current tobacco users (logit = 0.01, 95% CI = [0.00, 0.02], p < 0.01) after adjusting for sociodemographic variables. These findings extended the research on social networks and health behaviors by identifying how local and trans-local ties differentially affected the vulnerabilities of tobacco and alcohol use among rural-to-urban migrants in China. The findings suggested that policies and interventions on reducing migrants’ health risk behaviors should focus on the role of different types of social ties.

Early lifetime experience of urban living predicts social attention in real world crowds

More than half of the world's population is currently living in cities, with more and more people moving to densely populated areas. The experience of growing up and living in crowded environments might influence the way we explore our social environment, mainly how we attend to others. Yet, we know little about how urbanicity affects this vital function of our social life. In two studies, we use mobile eye-tracking to measure participants' social attention, while walking through a shopping mall. Results show that social density of participants' native place impacts how frequently they look at passing strangers. People who experienced more city living from birth to early adolescence, attend more to strangers' faces than their rural counterparts. Our findings demonstrate that the early experience of urban upbringing configures social attention in adulthood. The urbanicity-related bias towards social gazing might reflect a more efficient processing of social information in urban natives.

Group Differences in the Psychological Integration Path of the Rural-to-Urban Migrants: A Conditional Process Analysis.

At present, income and welfare inequality between migrant workers and urban natives has improved in China, but there are still many “semi-urbanized” migrant workers, whose psychological integration into the migrant city is very important for their mental health. By using a second stage conditional process model to decompose the effect of income on psychological integration into direct and indirect effects, this study explores the different psychological integration paths of migrant workers in different migration ranges, based on the data of the China Migrants Dynamic Survey (CMDS). The results show that the total effect of income on psychological integration is positive, and the value of inter-provincial samples is twice that of full samples. There is a significant difference in psychological integration paths between inter-provincial and intra-provincial samples, and when social comparison acts as a mediator, income has no direct effect on psychological integration of intra-provincial samples, while the direct and indirect effects of inter-provincial samples account for half of each other. Perceived discrimination played a reversed moderated role in the effect of social comparison on psychological integration, i.e., the lower the degree of perceived discrimination, the stronger the positive effect of social comparison on psychological integration, and vice versa. Therefore, according to the actual needs of different groups, relevant policies should be gradually adjusted to improve the psychological integration of migrant workers, thus contributing to their mental health.

Urbanization and financial literacy: the knowledge spillover effect

ABSTRACT Using the dataset of the 2015 wave of the China Household Finance Survey (CHFS), this paper examines how urbanization influences individuals’ financial literacy. We demonstrate that the financial knowledge of urban natives spills to rural–urban migrants in the process of urbanization and urban agglomeration. We address the potential endogeneity issue by taking advantage of China’s land expropriation policy. Our results are robust to identification regressions and a series of robustness checks. Further mechanism analysis shows that the financial literacy spillover effect works mainly through social networks.

Risk and Vulnerability of Migrant Labours from West Bengal and their Life Satisfaction during Pandemics of COVID-19: A Case Study

From the very beginning of human evolution, people start the migration. Over time due to the complexity of life and rapid transform of socio-economic situation migration is gaining importance in day to day life. Migration is defined broadly as a permanent or semi-permanent change of residence. Migration takes place from economically less developed places to better places. West Bengal ranks fourth among states from where people out-migrated. West Bengal has a 9 crore population an estimation says from 2011 census data 2.2 lakh people, had migrated from West Bengal to other states for work and employment. As per our data Fifty per cent, migrants are lives in three sate namely Mumbai, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu. Generally, they are blue caller workers that are urban natives are heated to do. They engaged in 3d jobs Dirty, dangerous and demeaning. We have collected the data of 5449 peoples of West Bengal over the different state from the secondary data source. During this outbreak of infectious diseases COVID-19 some restriction is imposed in daily routine social distancing norms are used to prevent the spreading of this disease. Due to sudden announcement of lockdown, they are jobless, homeless and hopeless. The analysis in the paper also indicates that 73% of migrant worker don’t have basic food for surveillance. 12% of people are trying to come back there native place. 7% of the worker is out of money. Everything makes the migrant under psychological, social and emotional strains.

Diabetes Care in an Urban Indigenous American Community: Challenges and Suggestions for the Future

Indigenous Americans living with type 2 diabetes in urban areas like Chicago face significant challenges to meeting the care recommendations of their medical providers. Based upon mixed-methods research, including both qualitative and quantitative measures, in Chicago’s Indigenous community, I have found that diabetes-care and -prevention challenges faced by individuals in this community include (1) the high financial and time costs of care, (2) lack of recognition of or response to acute symptoms of high glucose levels, (3) prioritization of other life responsibilities, (4) distrust of western medicine, and (5) fatalistic views about diabetes development and prognosis. If we are to reduce rates of type 2 diabetes and its related complications in Indigenous American populations, we need to reframe our view of who Indigenous peoples are and what the type 2 diabetes epidemic means in these communities, and consider how to best develop solutions for care that are feasible in urban settings. This aim can be achieved through a greater awareness of the challenges faced by urban Natives caring for type 2 diabetes and by engaging with these communities to develop collaborative programs to improve care in these settings.

Consumer behavior of rural migrant workers in urban China

In Chinese cities, rural migrant workers are usually considered consumers with the lowest purchasing power. Nevertheless, the younger generation of rural migrants, who are considerably better educated and higher paid than their predecessors, form a growing group of able consumers. The increased consumption demand and capacity of rural migrants have started to transform the commercial landscape of Chinese cities, potentially contributing to the country's transition towards a consumption-driven economy. Based on a 2012 survey in Jiangsu Province, this paper identifies four distinct consumer types among young rural migrant workers: conservative, balanced, frustrated and adventurous. Their different consumption behaviors are shaped not only by their financial capacities, but also by their family responsibilities and acculturation attitudes in the city. Despite the similar constraints faced by all young rural migrant workers, some are more eager to develop an urban lifestyle and identity through imitating the consumer behavior of urban natives, while others largely retain rural customs and habits, which are shared by older generation migrant workers. The findings point to the impact of social and institutional barriers on rural migrants' consumption in light of increased social inequality amid China's urban transition.

Internal Migration and Mental Health: An Examination of the Healthy Migration Phenomenon in China

Using the 2008 and 2009 Rural–Urban Migration in China (RUMiC) survey data, two waves of a nationally representative survey dataset, this study examined the “healthy migrant phenomenon” with regard to mental health in China. The results show that migrants exhibited better mental health than urban residents did after controlling for variables of socioeconomic status in a regression analysis. The study confirms that the “healthy migrant phenomenon” does exist under the setting of internal rural to urban migration in China, and the socioeconomic status disparities between migrants and urban natives plays a vital role in the phenomenon. Taking advantage of the unique framework of the RUMiC survey data, we were able to use not only the samples of migrants and urban residents but also those of rural residents to assess the potential channels further. Our results provide some suggestive evidence that self-selection effect and “salmon effect” are possible mechanisms causing this phenomenon.

After the Citizenization: Can Household Registration Change Eliminate the Consumption Gap?

The urban-rural consumption gap under the influence of the household registration system is a social issue with Chinese characteristics. Can the current reform of the household registration system eliminate this gap? Using the survey data from Chinese Household Income Project (CHIP), this paper adopts the methods of Propensity Score Matching (PSM) and RIF (Re-centered Influence Function) Quantile Decomposition to quantitatively analyze the impact of changes in household registration on the consumption level of “urban hukou (household registration) obtainers” and the influence mechanism. Studies show: (1) There is still a significant difference in the consumption level between “urban hukou obtainers” and urban natives after the citizenization, and the consumption gap between the two groups is even greater after taking endogenous problems into consideration; (2) The impact of the citizenization on the consumption level of “urban hukou obtainers” has a significant heterogeneity. There are significant consumption differences due to different sources of the household registration, and this consumption gap has an expanding trend over time; (3) By decomposition, it is found that such consumption gap mainly comes from the gaps in income and social security between the two groups and its mechanism has been confirmed.

Modeling migration barriers in a two-sector framework: A welfare analysis of the hukou reform in China

The present paper constructs a two-sector labor market model for China featuring endogenous internal labor mobility and heterogeneous costs of migration induced by the Chinese household registration system (hukou). The main novelty of our model is to divide migrants into those with more family responsibilities and those with fewer to explain the empirical fact that almost all young people with rural hukou have migrated to cities, while people who stay in the rural area are older and have more family responsibilities. We conduct two policy experiments using the model: one experiment concerned with reducing costs of living for younger migrants and the other for older migrants. The main results are that the first policy would unambiguously increase social welfare, while the reduced-cost policy for older migrants would reduce poverty and inequality although some urban natives may experience a wage reduction.

Moving from Rural to Urban China: How Urbanization Affects Women’s Housework

The present study explores within-gender differences in domestic labor by studying housework variations across five different groups of women in contemporary China. We defined five groups of women according to their urbanization status in general and hukou (i.e., household registration) in particular. (a) Rural natives are women with rural hukou who have stayed in rural areas, (b) rural migrants are women with rural hukou who have migrated to an urban area but have not obtained an urban hukou, (c) policy-based converters are women with rural origins who have converted to being urban residents due to policy privileges, (d) merit-based converters are women with rural origins who have converted to urban residents because of their merit (i.e., education), and (e) urban natives are those who are born urban hukou holders. Multivariate results on a national dataset with 2186 partnered women (aged 18–60) revealed that among women with rural origins, converters spent the least time on housework, rural natives the most, and rural migrants fell in between. Successful converters, particularly merit-based converters, expressed the strongest desire to pursue gender equality and deliberately devoted less time to domestic work. Additional Propensity Score Matching (PSM) analysis that compared women who have migrated to cities with women who have stayed in rural areas provides evidence that moving to urban areas has a negative association with women’s housework time, irrespective of their official household registration status, no matter whether they are migrant women who are not officially recognized or are successfully converted urban women.

Which Chinese cities are more inclusive and why?

China's household registration system allows local governments to control migration by limiting migrants' eligibility to local public services. Many cities exclude migrant residents from important social benefits, which reduces labor mobility and contributes to the socioeconomic gap between migrants and urban natives. This study measures the extent of China's local migration restriction from the perspective of inclusive provision of public services and explains cross-city disparities. We define urban inclusiveness as the extent to which migrants can access social benefits provided locally and construct an urban inclusiveness index using factor analysis. We find significant cross-city differences in urban inclusiveness toward migrants. Statistical analyses suggest that local fiscal capacity and labor demand, instead of cultural tradition, are the major determinants of urban inclusiveness. We further use the gap between the inclusiveness toward high- and low-skilled migrants to measure local skill-based migration selectivity. We find that more developed cities, i.e., cities with larger populations, higher levels of gross regional product per capita, and greater shares of industrial sector, are more selective based on migrants' skills, while cultural openness does not help bring down skill-based selectivity. Our research suggests an instrumental view of migrants in China's urban policy that contributes to social inequality and the lack of labor mobility, which can restrict China's development in the long term.

Vegetation on and around large-scale buildings positively influences native tropical bird abundance and bird species richness

High population growth in the tropics is driving urbanisation, removing diverse natural ecosystems. This is causing native species to suffer while introduced synanthropes flourish. City planners are developing urban greenspace networks, in part trying to address this issue. Architects contribute to these greenspace networks by designing elevated and ground level green spaces on large-scale buildings. However, little evidence is available on whether building green spaces support native fauna. This is true for birds in tropical Singapore that support important ecosystem services and have existence value. Therefore, in this study, we conducted bird surveys and statistical analyses to determine, if and how vegetation on three building green space types (ground gardens, roof gardens and green walls) have a positive impact on native or introduced bird species. We found that elevated greenery (roof gardens and green walls) on large-scale buildings supported a higher richness of birds and abundance of urban native birds than control roofs and walls without vegetation. Ground gardens supported similar levels of native species as roof gardens but also a larger proportion of generalist synanthropes. However, we found no tropical forest habitat specialists across any space type. Therefore, we recommend roof gardens and ground gardens as a potential space for urban natives outside of a less competitive ground-level urban environment. Our study also found certain building design elements (height of elevated space, presence of specific plants) supported different species groups. Therefore, we suggest that these ecological requirements for different species groups are considered when designing a building’s green space.