Job and home dilemma: housing pathways of urban migrants in China

ABSTRACT

China’s rapid industrialization and urbanization have been accompanied by massive internal population migration over the past decades. These immigrants experience various housing disadvantages along their migration journeys. Using longitudinal survey datasets from China Family Panel Studies, this paper identifies the housing pathways adopted by the Chinese urban migrants, including moving into homeownership, moving out of homeownership, and non-homeownership mobility. Job changes and institutional forces are the most significant mobility triggers, while family life cycle events are vital predictors of moving into homeownership. The dilemma of job-induced migration versus family-centred homeownership attainment has resulted in various social issues. This paper suggests that policies should be systematically designed for industry convergence from an overall urban planning perspective to promote township urbanization, including industrial relocation, rural economic revitalization, and institutional reforms of rural-urban disparities.

KEYWORDS:

• Housing pathways
• immigrants
• urbanization
• social sustainability

Data availability

Some or all data, models, or codes generated or used during the study are available from the corresponding author by request (family ID, housing tenure in 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016; age and gender of household head in 2016, changes of job arrangement, marriage status, family size, household income, hukou, and education qualifications of household head in 2012, 2014, and 2016).

Notation list

The following symbols are used in this paper:

$ai1$= the housing tenure of a sample household in 2010

$ai2$= the housing tenure of a sample household in 2012

$ai3$= the housing tenure of a sample household in 2014

$ai4$= the housing tenure of a sample household in 2016

E = other tenure types

G = rent public housing/work unit housing

O = homeownership

P = rent private housing

R = lived in relatives or friends’ home

Acknowledgment

This work is supported by the National Social Science Fund of China (Youth Project) (No. 17CSH028) and China Family Panel Studies (CFPS), Institute of Social Science Survey, Peking University.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 The symbols in the figures could be referred to the notation list in the later section of the paper.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Office for Philosophy and Social Sciences [grant number 17CSH028].