To move or not to move? Residential mobility of rural migrants in a medium-sized Chinese city: the case of Yangzhou

Abstract

This article evaluates the residential mobility decisions of rural migrants with a history of living in urban villages in Yangzhou City, Jiangsu province. Many were displaced by its demolition–redevelopment policy (forced movers); some chose to move voluntarily to improve their housing utility (voluntary movers); others decided to stay put in substandard housing (voluntary non-movers). A survey of their current housing conditions revealed that, compared to voluntary non-movers, most forced movers had not become better-off. But the voluntary movers had done much better than both of the other groups, implying that a timely move could have led to their improved housing conditions. However, even voluntary moves proved to have a downside, namely, that voluntary migrants would likely end up living somewhere more remote from coveted facilities and locations of jobs in the inner city. Logistic regression analysis showed how differences in socio-demographic characteristics between voluntary movers and non-movers could explain why some decided to move. For those who decided to stay, the analysis also indicates how the advantages of the current location may compensate for housing deficiencies. These results correspond to the motives migrants expressed in supplementary in-depth interviews: migrants intending to become permanent residents were most likely to move for better housing. The findings also point to structural constraints on residential mobility. For poor migrants without a Jiangsu hukou, moving to better housing was simply not an option. This suggests that further hukou reform is needed if urban redevelopment is not only meant to improve the image of the city but also the migrants’ housing conditions.

Keywords:

• Rural–urban migrants
• residential mobility
• housing conditions
• demolition redevelopment
• hukou
• Yangzhou

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Such options exist because it usually takes a long time to settle conflicting positions of government/developer and the landlords/homeowners in negotiations; to derive some income from their property in the interim, owners tend to lower the rent because of uncertainty.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [41701153] and Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation of Ministry of Education of China [19YJCZH146].

Notes on contributors

Xu Huang

Xu Huang is an Associate Professor in the School of Geography at Nanjing Normal University, China [[email protected]]. His research interests include the social integration of immigrants in globalizing Chinese cities and their belonging and attachment to the neighborhood at the destination.

Jan Van Weesep

Jan van Weesep is Professor Emeritus of urban geography and urban policy in the Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning at Utrecht University, The Netherlands.

Shuangshuang Tang

Shuangshuang Tang is a Professor in the School of Geography at Nanjing Normal University, China. Her main area of research interests includes the settlement and integration of migrants in Chinese cities and the social mobility of rural residents in Chinese villages.