Chinese Journal of Sociology ›› 2013, Vol. 33 ›› Issue (4): 103-116.

• Articles • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Stay or Leave: A Study on the Role of Political Social Capital on Rural-Urban Migrants’ Desire to Settle in the City

  

  1. Author 1：LIU Qian，School of Management，Xi’an Jiaotong University；Author 2：DU Haifeng，School of Public Policy and Administration，Xi’an Jiaotong University）；Author 3：JIN Xiaoyi，School of Public Policy and Administration，Xi’an Jiaotong University；Author 4：CUI Ye，School of Public Policy and Administration，Xi’an Jiaotong University.
  • Online:2013-07-20 Published:2013-07-20
  • Contact: Author 1：LIU Qian，School of Management，Xi’an Jiaotong University,E-mail：liuqian67520@126.com E-mail:E-mail：liuqian67520@126.com
  • About author:Author 1：LIU Qian，School of Management，Xi’an Jiaotong University；Author 2：DU Haifeng，School of Public Policy and Administration，Xi’an Jiaotong University）；Author 3：JIN Xiaoyi，School of Public Policy and Administration，Xi’an Jiaotong University；Author 4：CUI Ye，School of Public Policy and Administration，Xi’an Jiaotong University.
  • Supported by:

    This paper was supported by the National Science & Technology Pillar Program during the 12th FiveYear Plan Period(2012BAI32B06,2012BAI32B07) and the National Science Found (71071128).

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Abstract: Discouraging rural-urban migrants’ roaming across different cities is helpful for them to get integrated with the city where they are working and is also of positive significance to the city in terms of maintaining its skilled occupations and upgrading its industrial sector. Based on the social capital theory, this study compared the differences in the effects of political social capital and other types of general social capital in order to analyze the impacts of the social capital from different types of organizations on ruralurban migrants’ desire to settle in their work locations and to further discuss the influences of the political social capital from different kinds of relationships. This attempt took one step further and was an extension of the existing research on the impact of social capital on rural migrant workers’ intention to stay in the city. The data used in this study came from a 2009 survey of ruralurban migrants in X City, Fujian province, which was carried out by Population and Development Research Institute of Xi’an Jiaotong University. The survey had a sample of 1 507 elements obtained with a loose quota sampling method. With the individual factors, family factors, social and environmental factors, and migrating factors under control, the binary logistic regression analysis yielded the following results: (1) the political social capital positively affected migrants’ desire to settle in the city more powerfully than does the general social capital, (2) compared with the strongrelationshipbased political social capital, the weakrelationshipbased political social capital had a greater positive impact on migrants’ desire to settle in the city, and (3) political social capital from both strong and weak relationships was more powerful than monorelationshipbased political social capital in affecting migrants’ desire to settle in the city. In addition, migrants were found to be more likely to depend on their weakrelationshipbased political social capital for help, thus, having broken the habituated Chinese way of thinking with kinship as its core characterized with “patterned differences” and “discriminated treatments”.

Key words: desire to settle in the city, political social capital, rural-urban migrant workers