Rural migrants' homeownership in Chinese urban destinations: Do institutional arrangements still matter after Hukou reform?

In China, the hukou system has long been cited as the underlying cause of the disadvantages in housing access that rural migrants encounter in urban destinations. However, following the latest round of hukou reform, does the hukou system still have a significant impact on rural migrants' housing outcomes? This paper addresses the question by examining hukou-related arrangements faced by rural migrants, in both their urban destination and their rural town of origin. Based on data from a nationwide survey conducted in 2011, we find that city entry criteria together with insecure and inalienable land rights negatively predict rural migrants' homeownership attainment. Moreover, the impact differs across urban locations. Consequently, although hukou reform has eased discrimination against rural individuals, disparities persist between urban natives and rural migrants. This paper demonstrates that these disparities result from unequal access to social welfare and housing.     

The hukou system and selective internal migration in China

This paper investigates the role of selective migration policies in the self-selection of migrants, taking China's specific household registration (hukou) system as a case study. We first incorporate the hukou system into the self-selection framework, demonstrating that it leads to a U-shaped selection pattern of migrants from inland to coastal regions. Based on four periods of census data in China, we further employed the binary logit and conditional logit models to verify our proposed theory. The results imply that the hukou system influences migrant selection through restricting hukou-related social amenities and distorting return to education by wage discrimination.     

Social Groups and Housing Differentiation in China's Urban Villages: An Institutional Interpretation

Possessing different land rights and distinct landscapes, and separated from the rest of the city by invisible institutional boundaries, China's urban villages are unusual enclaves for landless farmers, rural migrants and other urban hukou (citizenship rights) holders in a period of rapid urbanization. Although urban villages are well known for their disorder and unruliness, they provide temporary livelihood for indigenous villagers and inexpensive shelter for migrants and other urban residents. Urban villages are typically perceived as homogeneous low-income neighbourhoods characterized by low quality and high density housing. In fact, housing differentiation has emerged in urban villages among residents who possess different quantities and types of capital, rights/entitlements, skills and other assets. This paper aims to understand the social groups and the housing differentiation among them in the Chinese urban villages from an institutional perspective. It is based on a large-scale household survey in 11 urban villages in six Chinese cities. Empirical data show evidence of significant housing differentiation within these enclaves: indigenous villagers have become a petty rentier class; rural migrants pay the highest rents while enduring the lowest housing conditions; and housing conditions for urban hukou holders lie between those of the other two groups. Regression analysis suggests that urban villages share similar dynamics of housing differentiation as wider urban spaces, i.e. the combination of strong institutional constraints and emerging market influences leads to housing differentiation and inequality. Residents in urban villages are also highly mobile. The inflows and outflows of population form an important part of the urban socio-spatial restructuring process.     

The undermining of rural labor out-migration by household strategies in China's migrant-sending areas: The case of Nanyang,Henan Province

Although migrant labor shortages have affected migrant-receiving areas in Eastern China for many years, research shows that there is still an abundance of laborers in rural China. Therefore, the dynamics that undermine the out-migration of rural laborers in migrant-sending areas is a critical factor in the pace of China's urbanization process. Public policies promulgated by the central government focus on institutional reform, such as offering urban hukou³ to rural migrants. Still, the decision-making processes of rural villagers and potential migrants remain unclear. Based on a case study of 32 townships in Nanyang, and further investigation in nine migrant-sending provinces, this paper probes into the livelihood strategies of rural households, rather than accepting the current conclusions of many Western research models. Preliminary findings reveal that rural livelihood strategies are undermining further out-migration of rural laborers in migrant-sending areas in three ways: 1) income diversification strategies that reflect emerging local off-farm job opportunities; 2) peri-urbanization driven by rural hukou that rural residents find increasingly attractive compared to urban hukou; and 3) localized urbanization driven by rural industrialization, better public services and rural residents' desire to keep families intact. These findings differ from previous explanations of the coexistence of migrant labor shortages and an abundant rural labor supply. Most importantly, they suggest that opening urban hukou entitlement will not promote further rural-to-urban migration per se to the extent that is generally assumed, unless a more coordinated rural–urban development model can be achieved to change rural household livelihood diversification strategies.     

Rental housing management as surveillance of Chinese rural migrants: the case of hillside compound in Dongguan

Governance of numerous rural migrants has always been crucial to China’s social stability. Through a Foucauldian lens, this paper discusses surveillance of rural migrants and studies a new local approach called rental housing management (RHM). During recent years, local authorities in Dongguan have been developing RHM into an operation of incremental Panopticism that consists of gradually reinforced surveillance techniques—partitioning, monitoring, digital entrance guarding, and local registration—in retrofitted rental residences. The RHM enforces local authorities’ inspection and control of migrants, and induces migrants’ self-reporting, self-inspection, and self-protection. This creates difficulties with migrants’ social interaction and community building. This paper reveals that local authorities have been transforming surveillance approaches from management based on hukou (household registration) into RHM that furthers localized spatial governance of rural migrants in the hukou reform.     

Residential mobility in China: home ownership among rural–urban migrants after reform of the hukou registration system

This paper analyzes the housing tenure of China’s rural–urban migrants in eight destination municipalities in Jiangsu province after the reform of the urban registration system (called hukou in Chinese). The objective is to distill links between home ownership and formal residency status. Using binary logistic models, the paper explores the effects of demographics and institutional factors on home ownership. The analysis is based on the data from a survey conducted in 2009 in eight municipalities, representing the responses to the institutional reforms carried out from the 2000s on. The prevalence of home ownership proves to be affected by age, gender, educational level, household size, personal income, participation in an urban insurance scheme, and a Jiangsu hukou status. However, an inter-municipality comparison reveals divergent effects of a Jiangsu hukou. Registration plays a significant role in relatively more-developed municipalities, where the entitlements are higher but so is the threshold to obtain them. In contrast, its role is not significant in less-developed municipalities, where access to civil amenities is more readily granted.     

The extreme primacy of location: Beijing's underground rental housing market

This article analyzes Beijing's subterranean housing market within the context of the city's larger housing supply system. The emergence of this widespread market of rooms for rent in bomb shelters and basements indicates a demand for housing attributes that neither the mainstream private housing market nor public housing programs yet supply. The study collected market data about these rental units from internet ads during October 2012–September 2013 and mapped their locations, displaying their general spatial distribution. Next, a hedonic price model was deployed on this data which reveals the relative priorities and preferences in price levels, location, and housing amenities of the middle–lower income population, particularly migrants who do not possess hukou, Chinese urban residence rights.     

Housing stress and mental health of migrant populations in urban China

Social epidemiological studies have long understood housing as a social determinant of mental health. However, most studies have focused on the formal housing sector and the conceptualisation of housing is limited to the housing per se. This study aims to bridge the gap by investigating the mental health impact of housing disadvantages concerning the migrant population in China, who are largely excluded from the formal housing sector. Drawing from recent writings on stress as the intermediary agent between modern city life and mental illness, the study examines the relationship between housing and neighbourhood conditions, perceived stress and mental health status. Using a large-scale survey conducted in twelve Chinese cities in 2009, this research found that informal housing tenants have the highest level of perceived stress and worst mental health status compared to dormitory tenants and formal housing residents. Poor housing conditions are significantly associated with perceived stress but not with mental health, while the neighbourhood social environment significantly predicts both perceived stress and mental health. The paper concludes by calling for more ethnographic research on migrants' resilience and stress-coping strategies and more attention in urban planning and housing policy to address the vulnerability and adversity of migrant settlements.     

The effects of social ties on rural-urban migrants' intention to settle in cities in China

The rapid increase of temporary migrants in large Chinese cities has led to the need for a nuanced and comprehensive understanding of the factors contributing to the influx. However, previous investigation into this subject has been undermined by an oversimplification of the concepts and measurements related to settlement intentions and migrants' social network. This study uses a combination of data from a 2013 nationwide survey and multilevel logit regressions to investigate the settlement intentions of 12,807 rural-urban migrants across eight cities in China. It especially focuses on the ways in which social ties between migrants and people in their destination cities shaped their intention to settle there. This study makes an innovative contribution to the literature in three ways. First, it distinguishes between migrants' ties to non-residents (other migrants from the same place of origin), kin residents (local residents who are kin), and non-kin residents (local residents who are not kin). Second, it distinguishes between interactive social ties and supportive social ties. Third, it uses multiple indicators to measure the intention of migrants who decide to permanently settle, as well as hukou transfer and housing ownership. Findings from our analysis indicate that the newly formed intergroup ties of migrants and their existing intragroup ties exert different impacts on their intention to settle. Specifically, migrants' newly formed ties with non-kin residents are positively linked to their settlement intention, while their ties to non-residents are negatively associated with their settlement intention. Our findings also indicate that the social ties of migrants have different effects on the different dimensions of their settlement intention. The social ties of migrants play an important role in their permanent settlement and housing ownership intentions, but their effect on hukou transfer intentions is relatively weak. Additionally, our research discovered that supportive social ties play a more important role than do interactive social ties in shaping migrants' settlement intention.     

Supporting or dragging? effects of neighbourhood social ties on social integration of rural-to-urban migrants in China

Abstract

Urban scholars have debated the complex effects of neighbourhood-based social ties on the economic and social integration of marginalized populations in the mainstream urban society. Studies of migrant populations in China have noted the existence of strong neighbourhood ties and solidarity in migrant communities, but few have examined whether strong neighbourhood cohesion enhances or hinders broader social integration of rural migrants. This article investigates the extent to which different types of social ties in the neighbourhood, as opposed to more social networks developed at the city level, predict more frequent intergroup interaction and stronger place attachment among rural migrants in Chinese cities. Statistical analysis, using data from a twelve-city migrant survey, reveals that, while the diversity of social networks does matter, the neighbourhood is a territorial anchor supporting, rather than dragging, the urban social integration of rural migrants. The findings highlight the importance of neighbourhood in China’s inclusive urbanization strategy and potential conflicts in recent deprived neighbourhood redevelopment programs.     

Interpreting Chinese Hukou System from a Foucauldian Perspective

The Chinese hukou system has been a hot topic in China study for decades. It not only restricts access to state-sponsored benefits (such as food and housing provision) in pre-reform China, but continues to influence the local-led urbanization in post-reform era. However, few studies have explained why this highly exploitative system persists in China. This paper tries to contribute some insights to interpretation of this issue based on Foucault’s concept of governmentality. It is argued that Chinese hukou system is actually a power relation consisting of a series of governmental technologies based on differentiation, surveillance and calculation in pursuit of economic growth and political stability. The governmental techniques and rationality within the Chinese institutional system make the hukou system persist in modern China.     

Domestic property and housing class in contemporary urban China

This article examines the division of housing class in the context of Chinese society since the market-oriented housing reform in 1998. Based on data from a recent study, this paper examines three housing classes and their housing situation in four of China’s major urban centers. The results of a multivariate analysis on housing ownership among the three housing classes show that apart from some socioeconomic factors similar to those in the West, institutional factors, such as the hukou system and resident status, are also significant. The results imply that limited housing choices may have caused over privatization and, to certain extent, a single urban housing system. This could lead to conflict among people in various housing classes, as a response to the inequality in the urban housing market.     

Reprint of “An ‘unceasing war’ on land development on the urban fringe of Beijing: A case study of gated informal housing communities”

The existing literature about informal development in China's cities is dominated by studies of conventional informal housing in urban villages, while a new type of informal housing, gated informal housing communities, has rarely been studied. The paper aims to contribute to the existing literature by discussing why and how these gated informal housing communities were developed, looking at the case of Beijing. The results of the analysis show that institutional discrimination against rural areas with respect to land use rights, revenue redistribution, policymaking procedures and the hukou-related social welfare system the major drivers of development of informal communities. In particular, informal development is influenced by the ways land value is captured by, compensated for and allocated to the state government rather than rural villagers in the process of its transfer from rural to urban land. For future policy, more institutional innovation or reform is imperative in order to adequately deal with the emergence of gated informal housing communities. Institutionally inclusive land and housing policies, rather than intense top-down control, are needed in China.     

THE CONTACT HYPOTHESIS IN URBAN CHINA: THE PERSPECTIVE OF MINORITY‐STATUS MIGRANT WORKERS

ABSTRACT: This study is the first to test Allport's (1954) contact hypothesis from the perspective of a minority group in China. Employing a sample of off‐farm migrant workers in urban China, results indicate a positive effect on self‐reported attitudes of intergroup friendship contact between migrant and local workers; and positive effects on self‐reported behavioral interaction between migrants and urban locals of both intergroup friendship and intergroup nonfriendship contact.     

Optimal time for implementing cordon toll pricing scheme in a monocentric city

This paper proposes an analytical model to address the timing issue of cordon toll pricing in a monocentric city. The proposed model allows an explicit consideration of the interactions among three types of agents in the urban system: (i) the local authority who aims to jointly determine the optimal time for introducing cordon toll pricing scheme, cordon toll location and toll level to maximize social welfare of the urban system; (ii) property developers who seek to determine the intensity of their capital investment in the land market to maximize their own net profit generated from the housing supply; and (iii) households who choose residential locations that maximize their own utility within a budget constraint. The effects of the cordon toll pricing scheme on household's residential location choice and housing market structure in terms of housing price and space are explicitly considered. A comparison of the toll pricing schemes with a fixed and a mobile cordon location over time and the no toll case is carried out. The proposed model is also illustrated in several Chinese cities. Insightful findings are reported on the interactions among cordon toll pricing scheme, urban population size, household income level, toll collection cost, and urban development.     

Social discourse,housing search and residential segregation: the social determinants of recent economic migrants’ residential mobility in Seville

Abstract

Immigrants’ neighbourhood choices are key to understanding today’s dominant socio-territorial dynamics, especially in urban areas. We analysed the factors involved in the housing search at the early stages of the economic migrant influx in Seville, Spain (Andalusia region, Europe’s southern border) and their impact on the development of residential segregation in this city. Using a qualitative methodology approach based on focus groups, unstructured interviews and discourse analysis, the implicit and explicit social determinants that influence economic migrants’ residential behaviours were examined. In line with previous studies, the results highlight the importance of socio-economic determinants and a trend towards self-segregation. Social discourse analysis reveals how the host society’s ethnoracial preferences and prejudices – from the outset of the economic migrant influx – translate into barriers to accessing the housing market, which plays a crucial role in understanding economic migrant residential mobility and its impact on and consequences for the residential segregation process.     

The Migrant Metropolis and American Planning

Problem: Immigration poses various problems for U.S. cities and regions, and the roles planners should play in migrant communities are not clear.

Purpose: I consider how practitioners and scholars have understood and addressed the planning challenges and opportunities presented by the major migrations of ethnic minorities to U.S. cities and regions over the past century.

Methods: I trace discussions of planning and migration at professional planning conferences over the past century and survey planning scholarship and practice related to immigration and migrant communities in three principal eras: early 20th century southern and eastern European immigration; the mid-century internal migrations of African Americans and Puerto Ricans; and immigration in the late 20th and early 21st century.

Results and conclusions: Over the past century, immigration has had physical, economic, and social effects on people and places that are legitimate concerns of urban planners. Yet, the planning profession has had an ambiguous and often ambivalent relationship with migrant communities and has struggled to define specific roles for planners within those communities while social workers and other community and economic development practitioners played larger roles. Planning scholars have not paid as much attention to migrants' adaptation and mobility in U.S. society or their impacts on receiving communities, labor markets, housing, and congestion as have other scholars and urbanists.

Takeaway for practice: Planners have engaged with migrants in a variety of ways. Understanding this history provides context for contemporary debates about immigration and helps frame challenges and opportunities in migrant and receiving communities as planning problems.

Research support: None.     

Negative social capital: State breakdown and social destitution in America's urban core

Pierre Bourdieu's concept of social capital is developed and deployed to highlight the major cause of the continued degradation of social conditions and life chances in the black American ghetto: the erosion of “state social capital”, that is, the formal organizations presumed to provide civic goods and services (physical safety, legal protection, welfare, education, housing, and health care). These institutions have turned into instruments of surveillance, suspicion, and exclusion rather than vehicles of social integration and trust-building. Together with the withdrawal of the wage-labor economy in the context of extreme racial segregation, their debilitation has accelerated the shrinking of the ghetto's indigenous organizational basis and helped concentrate in it the most dispossessed segments of the urban (sub)proletariat. This suggests that state structures and policies play a decisive role in the formation and distribution of both formal and informal social capital.     

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.     

Examining the relationship between neighborhood environment and residential locations of juvenile and adult migrant burglars in China

Residential location of offenders has been an important topic in the crime literature. However, prior research on offender residence pays little attention to the factor of age. Coupled with the rapid urbanization in China, many Chinese have moved from rural areas to urban areas and many burglaries are committed by these migrants, especially adult migrants. They need to choose their residences once they move to a new place. This study aims to examine the characteristics of neighborhood environment of migrant burglars' residential locations and how they differ by age in a large city in China. The conceptual framework is based on social disorganization theory. In general, the spatial pattern of juvenile migrant burglars varies largely from those of adult migrant burglars. Juvenile migrant burglars mainly concentrate in urban areas including urban villages, while a large number of adult migrant burglars reside in urban villages and suburban villages. The results of a series of zero-inflated negative binomial regression models reveal that a neighborhood with high residential instability is likely to attract more juvenile migrant burglars, while a socially disorganized neighborhood tends to include more adult migrant burglars. The residential characteristics of adult migrant burglars mostly agree with social disorganization theory. These findings can have important implications for burglary prevention and neighborhood safety.