Xu, Mengran;
Wu, Fulong;
Moore, Susan;
Li, Zhigang;
(2023)
Migrants' willingness to contact local residents in China.
Cities
, 133
, Article 104120. 10.1016/j.cities.2022.104120.
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Abstract
Although the integration of migrants has been increasingly pursued by the policy makers in many countries, there remains a paucity of knowledge regarding what migrants themselves think about integration. Based on the 2014 China Migrants Dynamic Survey, this study draws upon new assimilation theory to investigate migrants' willingness to contact locals in China. Our results suggest that most migrants in China are willing to contact natives, but their willingness may not be strong. Different from the actual intergroup contact, migrants' willingness to develop intergroup contact is not affected by their socioeconomic status. Instead, such willingness might be developed based on the cultural commonalities between migrants and natives. Residential segregation can weaken migrants' willingness to contact locals even after the endogeneity bias of residential choice is controlled by using instrumental variable method and focusing on migrants who live in the housing provided by employers. This draws a darker picture of migrant integration. Previous literature explains that migrants faced with residential segregation have fewer opportunities to form intergroup contact which in turn can hamper their overall integration. Our analysis goes a step further by revealing that they may also lose their motivation to make intergroup contact – a preference that is critical to changing their disadvantaged situation.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Migrants' willingness to contact local residents in China |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.cities.2022.104120 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2022.104120 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
| Keywords: | Intergroup contact, Integration, Migrants, China |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment > The Bartlett School of Planning |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10160682 |
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