Housing Vulnerability, Shared Housing, Informality, and Crowding: The Housing Strategies of China’s Recent College Graduates

ABSTRACT

Mirroring developments elsewhere, for recent college graduates in China the transition to employment is increasingly protracted and, for some, precarious. Case studies of individual strategies and cities indicate a diversification of housing pathways, where economic precarity is rendering at least some vulnerable. Based on original survey data collected in 2019, I investigate the housing choices of Chinese college graduate job market entrants and ask who is vulnerable and whether adverse outcomes are mere market entry strategies or lasting. I find that recent graduates generally find housing in central locations, close to their work. However, to achieve favourable locational outcomes on low budgets, many resort to sharing. High-density room sharing of three or more people is illegal but prominent and dominates in first-tier cities. The findings highlight how urbanization interacts with housing vulnerability and contribute to theorizing on the housing crisis, the Global North-South binary, and the very nature of home sharing.

KEYWORDS:

• College graduates
• skilled migrants
• housing vulnerability
• shared rental housing
• Urban China

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The Chinese household registration system hukou ties access to citizenship rights to the place of registration, typically the place of birth. Distinguishing rural from urban status, it functions like an internal passport and dictates access to government services (Wu 2016).

2. Bed space rentals are extremely crowded apartments, converted into dormitory-style accommodations where people can rent by the bed (Harten, Kim, and Brazier 2021).

3. The Chinese urban tier system is neither administrative nor political but widely used. Tiers reflect differences in income levels, economic productivity, and population size. The strongest urban centres – Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen – are known as tier 1 cities (NBS 2021).

4. Questionnaire Star scans responses for validity. When minimum requirements were met, the app transferred reward money (reward: 8 RMB/approx. 1 USD) to the respondent’s digital wallets according to a lottery system.

5. The government designated 110 universities “institutions of excellence” (“211” and “985” projects), which receive most government funding, need-based scholarships, and are the most selective (Li et al. 2012).

6. Range cut-offs were developed during pilot testing with a focus group of recent college graduates.

7. There are slightly more job (40%) than housing changes (38%).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy Lusk Center for Real Estate.