Living together or apart? International migrants and family coresidence in Yiwu, China

ABSTRACT

Most studies of migrant family separation and reunification concern migration to Europe or North America, where many migrants settle permanently and some institutions facilitate their integration. Among migrants to China, permanent residency and naturalization are rare and integration is limited. How can we understand migrant family separation and coresidence in this kind of destination? Through a survey of 367 international residents and in-depth interviews, we investigate characteristics of migrants in single, sole, couple, and family arrangements in Yiwu, a trading hub and host city to more than 13,000 international migrants. We find that when a male migrant lives with a fellow-migrant wife, the wife is rarely employed, and the employment rate among fellow-migrant wives in Yiwu is lower than the employment rate among wives who remain in the origin. This suggests maximizing household income is not the purpose of the wife’s migration to China. We use logistic regression to identify factors associated with family coresidence among male migrants who have at least one dependent child and a wife who is not a Chinese national. High income, professional occupation, having preschool-aged children, years in the destination, and being from a country at war are associated with family coresidence, while the more children the migrant has, the less likely he is to live with his wife and children. This study offers evidence that where settlement is restricted and integration of migrants is limited, some migrants still pursue family coresidence, but affordability is a major constraint on this arrangement, especially in connection with the cost of children’s education.

KEYWORDS:

• International migration
• China
• Yiwu
• split household
• family migration
• integration

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Leiwen Jiang, Yu Zhu, Baochang Gu, Jiawei Hou, Yupeng Chen, Tao Xu, and all the graduate students and informants who participated in this research.

Disclosure statement

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

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. The 2020 census reports this number as waijirenyuan (foreign nationality population). It does not include migrants from Taiwan, Hong Kong, or Macau.

2. Expert interview, July 23, 2019. In this interview, a local scholar who is familiar with Yiwu’s international migrant communities reported that most migrants to Yiwu are male.

3. Interview with Yiwu Exit-Entry Administration, June 27, 2017.

4. The figures provided here compare male sole migrants with male family migrants. Figures in Table 1 include both male and female migrants.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Major Program of National Social Science Fund of China under Grant No. 16ZDA088 and the General Program of Philosophy and Social Science Fund of Shanghai under Grant No. 2020BSH009. The funding sources had no involvement in the conduct of the research. The authors derive no financial interest or benefit from the applications of this research.