In this study, we examine migrant stigma and its effect on social capital reconstruction among rural migrants who possess legal rural residence but live and work in urban China. After a review of the concepts of stigma and social capital, we report data collected through in-depth interviews with 40 rural migrant workers and 38 urban residents recruited from Beijing, China. Findings from this study indicate that social stigma against rural migrants is common in urban China and is reinforced through media, social institutions and their representatives, and day-to-day interactions.As an important part of discrimination, stigma against migrant workers creates inequality, undermines trust, and reduces opportunities for interpersonal interactions between migrants and urban residents. Through these social processes, social stigma interferes with the reconstruction of social capital (including bonding, bridging and linking social capital) for individual rural migrants as well as for their communities. The interaction between stigma and social capital reconstruction may present as a mechanism by which migration leads to negative health consequences. Results from this study underscore the need for taking measures against migrant stigma and alternatively work toward social capital reconstruction for health promotion and disease prevention among this population.

Health promotion and prevention programs in the future to improve migrants' QOL should pay more attention to reducing the discrimination against migrants as well as helping migrants to reduce discrepancy between premigratory expectation and postmigratory reality.

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The relationship between rural-to-urban migration and the spread of HIV is well described, although most studies focus on sexual risk behaviors among rural-to-urban migrants at the urban destination areas. Few studies have examined the sexual risk behaviors of migrants who have returned from urban areas to their rural homes ("return migrants") in comparison with those of local rural residents who have never migrated to cities ("nonmigrants"). This study examines the potential association between rural-to-urban migration and sexual risk behaviors by comparing sexual risk behaviors between 553 return migrants and 441 nonmigrants from same rural communities in China. Findings reveal that, after controlling for sociodemographic characteristics, return migrants in rural areas had higher levels of sexual risk, including unprotected sex, than nonmigrants. Among return migrants, sexual risk behaviors were associated with age, gender, marital status, and number of different jobs they had previously held in the cities. These findings underscore the importance for HIV/AIDS education and prevention efforts targeting the migrant population in urban destinations as well as the return-migrant population in rural areas.

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