Abstract: Based on China General Social Survey (CGSS) in 2010, this paper investigates the impact of hukou status on urban residents’ public consciousness and public participation. Public consciousness includes selfreported ability of political participation, selfreported confidence of evaluating government’s activity, anticipation of the effectiveness of public participation, individual attitude indicating public consciousness, while public participation includes voting for neighborhood committee members, voting for property owner committee members, and participating in public activities in the local community and involved in group events. We find that nonlocal hukou status has some negative effects on migrants’ public consciousness, and the effects are not significantly weakened with the increase of migrants’ income level or education level. Migrants are more passive in public participation, mainly because of the institutional constraints. However, in terms of being involved in group events or attitude towards unfair treatment from the government, migrants are not that different from the local. That is to say, if there is lack of institutionalized mechanism which effectively responds to migrants’ reasonable appeals, migrants might fight for their rights through those public activities such as group events which may lead to social instability. We also find that urban residents with higher education level or more income have stronger public consciousness; while their public participation, however, is not necessarily more frequent.

Key words: migrants,  public consciousness, public participation, hukou system