Social Trust Between Rural Migrants and Urban Locals in China – Exploring the Effects of Residential Diversity and Neighbourhood Deprivation

Abstract

The social integration of migrants has become a major challenge for Chinese cities as many rural migrants still face discrimination from urban natives. Research suggests that intergroup social trust can improve cohesion and reduce stigmatisation. However, little is known about the trust level between migrants and locals and its underlying dynamics in urban China. Our study explores the trust between native Shanghai residents and rural migrants and how neighbourhood factors including residential diversity and neighbourhood poverty may play a role. We adopt a multilevel model to analyse the 1,420 questionnaire samples collected in 2013 from local and migrant residents in Shanghai. Our results show that people living in areas with more migrant residents also have higher intergroup social trust, which may indicate that exposure to more out-group neighbours can remove preconceived stigmas and foster tolerance. In contrast, there is less intergroup trust in poor neighbourhoods although migrant residents are exceptions. We speculate that migrants are less affected by local poverty because they are less spatially bound to the locality and are thus less likely to compete with native residents over local resources. Our results differ from findings in multi-ethnic societies where residential diversity causes distrust, but we believe this is a reasonable outcome considering that locals and migrants in urban China share more in common such as ethnicity, language, and national identity.

Affective neighbourly relations between migrant and local residents in Shanghai

“…More importantly, intergroup neighbourly relations also help to reduce distrust and stigmatisation that are exacerbated by institutional discrimination and negative media coverage. Our study, therefore, contributes to the emerging research on the social integration of rural migrants (Liu et al, 2013;Wang et al, 2015;Yue et al, 2013) and identifies the importance of the neighbourhood in socially integrating migrants. With regard to the wider debate surrounding what constitutes positive intergroup contact, our research shows that neighbourly relations can be considered as a "pleasant" and "cooperative" form of social interaction advocated by the contact hypothesis (Hewstone & Brown, 1986;Pettigrew, 1998).…”

“…Scholarly interest in migrant-local relations has grown considerably in urban China (Roberts, 2002;Solinger, 1999Solinger, , 2006Wang et al, 2015Wang et al, , 2016Zhang et al, 2009). The general consensus is that rural migrants in particular are facing discrimination and hostility from local residents due to stigmas of crime and unemployment (Solinger, 1999).…”

“…As part of the effort to socially integrate rural migrants, the relationship between locals and migrants has moved more into scholarly focus, but most findings so far suggest that these relationships are truncated and transient (Chen et al, 2011;Liu, Li, & Breitung, 2012;Wang, Zhang, & Wu, 2015, 2016Zhang, Li, Fang, & Xiong, 2009). The Chinese government has also started to pay more attention to the importance of neighbourhood social relations in assisting migrants to become socialized to their new urban contexts in the host society (Wang, Shen, & Liu, 2008;Wu, 2012).…”

Neighbourhood cohesion under the influx of migrants in Shanghai

“…For traditional courtyards, the prospect of demolition and relocation (Wu and He, 2005) and fast residential turnovers due to the departure of affluent residents (Wu, 2012) may have reduced the willingness of residents to invest any further into the neighbourhood such as reaching out to new neighbours. The government's recent emphasis to construct a post-industrial globalising metropolis (Wu, 2015) has further accelerated the regeneration of old neighbourhoods such as traditional courtyards in inner city of Shanghai (Zhu, 2016). Compared to traditional courtyards, only urban villages fare even worse in terms of informal social control potentially because of the even higher residential turnover.…”

New theoretical dialogues on migration in China: introduction to the special issue

“…Community relations are important indicators to measure the accumulation of social capital (Du and Li 2010). Also, Wang, Zhang, and Wu (2017a) find out that the number of migrants is positively correlated to social trust in the communitiesthe more migrants in the communities, there would be more frequent contact between locals and migrants, which counteracts the stigmatisation towards migrants. Wu's (2012) work similarly demonstrates that migrants generally are strongly reliant on the social fabrics in communities although they are not keen on community activities.…”