Recipients of PSC Small Grant Awards

Migration to urban, especially to metropolitan areas, continues to occur at a large scale in China. For example, as of 2010, two fifths of the 23 million residents in Shanghai, one of the most attractive migration destinations, were migrants without permanent local household registration status (hukou). Previous literature in Western societies has shown that location of residence plays an important role in affecting the life opportunities during migrants’ assimilation process. Yet, little is known about the residential patterns among migrants in urban China, or whether migrants are segregated residentially from the urban natives. Even less is known about to what extent the residential patterns may (or may not) affect access to resources such as schools and hospitals that are instrumental to education and health care opportunities among migrants and their offspring. In this project, we will draw on multiple data sources and aim to: (1) identity spatial patterns of residential segregation between migrants and natives; and (2) examine locational attainments in terms of access to quality schools and hospitals by combining individual-level survey data and geocoded macro data.