Family Migration and Social Integration of Migrants: Evidence from Wuhan Metropolitan Area, China

Abstract

The social integration in host cities of China’s migrant population and its determinants has received much attention from researchers. However, few have directly addressed the family migration in differentiating migrants’ social integration. This study employs descriptive statistics and multivariate regression to explore the social integration across different family migration types, based on the data of China Migrants Dynamic Survey 2013 and 2017 in Wuhan metropolitan area. The findings show that the family migration in Wuhan metropolitan area is prevalent, and the central city Wuhan has advantages both in the proportion of whole-family migration and the scores of migrants’ social integration. In addition, the migrants’ family migration is significantly positively associated with their social integration, but the effect is variance in the regression models of social integration’s four dimensions. The findings reveal the Wuhan City’s leading position in promoting migrants’ social integration within the Wuhan metropolitan area. Furthermore, migration with more family members has higher levels of integration in economy and public service. This implies that the convenience provided by inflow cities’ government for family migration is crucial. To provide high-quality public services is of great significance to attract and retain migrants and then promote their overall social integration.

Association between Urban Educational Policies and Migrant Children’s Social Integration in China: Mediated by Psychological Capital

“…In these instances, neither do they persistently identify with the original rural culture, nor do they actively integrate into the mainstream culture of inflow cities. According to social identity theory, the higher the service quality provided by the urban government, the more it can promote the social integration of migrant children [ 43 ]. This study has further found that a series of educational policies of inflow cities have had significant positive impacts on such dimensions as migrant children’s identification, acculturation, and psychological integration for social integration (see Table 2 of this study).…”

Association between social integration and loneliness among the female migrant older adults with children: the mediating effect of social support

“…Following previous studies [ 52 – 55 ], social integration was assessed by four domain questions: economic integration, psychological integration, cultural integration, and community integration. Each domain contained one question: the question “How much is your monthly income?” is for economic integration; “Do you think you have become a local?” for psychological integration; “Can you speak the local Chinese dialect?” for cultural integration, and “How often do you participate in community activities?” for community integration.…”

Subjective social integration and its spatially varying determinants of rural-to-urban migrants among Chinese cities

“…Personal factors, such as gender, age, education and household registration, affect migrants' social role, urban cultural integration ability and labor market competitiveness, further affect migrants' cultural integration, social identity and happiness 28 , 29 . In addition, migrants with varying family sizes and economic incomes exhibit different lifestyles, social styles and economic pressures, so they have different integration situations 30 . The economic and political environment of the host city includes average income, commodity prices, government services, etc.…”