Between State and Market: Hukou, Nonstandard Employment, and Bad Jobs in Urban China

Abstract

China’s household registration system (hukou) has long divided urban and rural populations—economically, socially, and spatially. Economic reforms since the late-1970s, however, have led to increased opportunities for rural migrants in urban labor markets. But how are rural migrants being incorporated into urban employment? Drawing on Tilly’s relational inequality perspective, this article examines the relationship between hukou and job quality—paying particular attention to (1) nonstandard employment and (2) ownership sector. Compared to urban hukou workers, we find that rural hukou holders are more likely to be sorted into jobs with nonstandard employment relations—jobs with fewer benefits. Hence, a significant portion of the urban-rural gap in job quality is attributed to categorically linked sorting into nonstandard employment net of human capital. Further analyses reveal significant differences between sectors. These results highlight the durable and enduring nature of hukou as a significant basis of stratification in contemporary urban China.

Notes

Acknowledgments

The authors contributed equally to the production of this manuscript and are listed in alphabetical order. We would like to thank the Chinese Sociological Review editor and anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions on this manuscript. Earlier versions of this research were presented at the 2017 American Sociological Association meetings held in Montreal and the Ethnic Inequality in the Labor Market Conference held at the University of Amsterdam in September 2017. This manuscript benefitted from comments and suggestions at these conferences.

Notes

1 There are a variety of terms used across different disciplines to refer to the rise of nonstandard employment relationships (e.g., informal work, precarious work). See Arnold and Bongiovi (2013) for a discussion.

2 Tilly provides two additional mechanisms that “generalize the influence” of categorical inequality. Emulation refers to the diffusion of categorical inequality across organizations or “from one social setting to another” (1998, 10), while adaptation refers to how groups respond to these ongoing patterns of categorical inequality. Emulation is largely about the diffusion of practices across organizations, while adaptation may produce resistance to categorical inequality or promote hegemonic beliefs about it. Zhang (2014), for example, finds that rural migrants adopt urban cultural practices, such as dress, speech, and manner and disassociate from rural distinctions; sometimes even looking down on newer migrants lack of cultural assimilation. Such changes in identity construction facilitate life in urban places and may mitigate some marginalization, however, these actions simultaneously reconstruct notions of urban superiority. Some of these ideas suggest the significance of cultural capital. We do not have measures of cultural capital in our data, however, because the cultural capital is theorized to vary by hukou status, we will accurately capture between hukou inequalities, but not observe the specific mechanisms producing the effect.

3 Kalleberg et al.’s (2000) three-item measure included low-wage jobs (bottom 10%). We initially created a similar measure; however, we would lose about half of our rural migrant respondents, nearly all self-employed, due to missing wage data. We performed some robustness checks where we exclude self-employed workers and explored a 5-item measure including low-wage. The substantive results were similar. For consistency across our analyses we use the four-item index.

4 We also estimated models including certificate of national professional standards qualification as a form of human capital. As the inclusion of these variables did not change our substantial findings, and most respondents did not have this type of certificate, we did not include it in the models presented in this manuscript. Tables with these variables are available upon request.

5 We also estimated respondent’s age (linear and quadratic). These measures were highly correlated with work experience and failed to reach statistical significance in many of the models. The inclusion of age never changed our substantive findings. The presence of these variables, though nonsignificant, also increased the magnitude of the work experience variable, which is likely a result of collinearity. For this reason, we only report work experience in our models. Moreover, age is always estimated in earnings equations because earnings tend to grow over the life course. Employer provided benefits, however, generally come with the job and remain stable even as earnings increase.

6 One anonymous reviewer also asked about the effect of industry. To ensure the veracity of our findings, we also estimated models with industry controls (n = 15). The size of the hukou effects are marginally affected and statistical significance levels are unchanged. For example, in Table 5, model 4, the effect of rural hukou was reduced from .22 to .21 and the effect of full-time contingent (.70 to .65) and part-time (.79 to .74) were also slightly reduced.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kevin Stainback

Kevin Stainback ([email protected]) is professor of sociology at Purdue University, Indiana. His research broadly examines work, labor markets, and inequality using an organizational framework. He is interested in identifying general mechanisms and processes that create and sustain categorically linked inequalities. Most of his research has centered on gender and racial inequality in the U.S. context, but has more recently explored work, organizations, and inequality in China, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. His recent research appears in the Annual Review of Sociology and Gender & Society.

Zhenyu Tang

Zhenyu Tang ([email protected]) is an assistant professor of sociology at Franklin College, Indiana. She received a PhD in sociology from Purdue University and was a visiting assistant professor at East Tennessee State University during 2015–2017. Her main research interests are work quality, urban-rural inequality, gender inequality, social stratification and mobility in contemporary China.