The complex relationship between neighbourhood types and migrants’ socio-economic integration: the case of urban China

Migrants are important parts of China’s urban population, but still limited knowledge is known about the contextual determinants of their socio-economic integration in Chinese cities. Based on a large national micro-level data extracted from the 2014 China Migrant Dynamic Survey, we extend the literature on migrants’ socio-economic integration by examining the relationships between neighbourhood types and different dimensions of socio-economic integration. Our multi-dimensional index of socio-economic integration covers economic, socio-cultural and identity perspectives. The results show that migrants demonstrate significantly higher levels of overall socio-economic integration when living in formal neighbourhoods (composed of commercial properties, work unit and affordable housing), compared with those residing in informal neighbourhoods (e.g. urban villages). Moreover, migrants living in commercial property neighbourhoods are best integrated economically, and those living in affordable and work unit housing neighbourhoods are more socio-culturally integrated than others. Inner city old housing neighbourhoods are positively associated with socio-cultural integration, compared with urban villages, while both neighbourhood types are negatively correlated with identity integration. Our findings remain robust after controlling for potential endogeneity bias caused by migrants’ self-selection into different neighbourhood types. We conclude that neighbourhood types do matter for migrants’ socio-economic integration but there is large heterogeneity of the correlations across different migrant groups.