Becoming them or remaining us? The impact of communication on immigrant integration

ABSTRACT

We exploit an exogenous introduction of a mobile phone plan among rural-to-urban migrants in Beijing, China, to study the causal impact of communication on immigrant integration and assimilation. More contact via phone calls and social media over a year improves immigrants’ language alignment, enhances their perceived similarity with the natives, while attenuates self-identity of and adherence to original cultures. Migrants show stronger settlement intentions in capital cities of native provinces rather than in Beijing, because of more concerns about distant family members and perceived perpetuating discrimination under intervention. Long-term integration, indicated by a sense of belonging, attitudes on inter-group marriage and the importance of their children to learn original languages remains stable.

KEYWORDS:

• Immigrant
• integration
• assimilation
• communication
• identity

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• J15
• J61
• J70
• C93

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ It equals 3.5% of monthly net income in our sample.

² In most socioeconomic characteristics and integration traits, sample migrants are not statistically different from those in the official migrant monitoring survey that was conducted by the Migrant Population Center of the National Health Commission and contains 6,000 migrant workers in Beijing in 2014. That having been said, our sample earned about one fifth less than the average migrant in the official dataset and perhaps due to this, self-reported 38.6% lower income status compared with native workers and 23% lower level of agreement on ‘I’m a member of this city’.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by Beijing Social Science Foundation, ‘Mechanisms Underlying Migrants’ Multi-dimensional Social Integration: Perspectives from Behavioural Economics’ [Grant No.: 17YJC028].