Abstract:

Along with the rapid development of urbanization, the migration mode of floating populations has gradually shifted from “individual migration” to “family migration.” In 2014, the National New-type Urbanization Plan put forward the strategic goal of “promoting people-oriented urbanization” and encouraging the orderly citizenization of rural migrant workers. In this context, the family migration of rural-urban migrants and their social integration after entering a city have attracted considerable attention. Thus, based on data from the floating population survey conducted in Jinhua City in 2016, this paper refers to rural-urban migrant families with migrant children as the research subject and explores their social integration level and influencing factors quantitatively through principal component and multiple linear regression models. First, social integration of rural-urban migrant families with migrant children has three dimensions: children’s education, economic adaptation, and psychological integration. For these families, whether their children can obtain a solid education is the primary consideration for their integration into a city, followed by their economic conditions and psychological levels. Family-based floating population groups have more diversified needs for social integration into inflow cities than populaces characterized by individual mobility. Second, the degree of social integration of families is only at the medium level; thus, the quality of integration needs to be improved. The integration degree in terms of children’s education is the highest, followed by economic adaptation; further, the degree of psychological integration is the lowest, and there are pronounced differences among the dimensions. Jinhua City focuses especially on the education of migrant families’ children. Relevant policies ensure that these children are educated, so their education integration level is relatively high. However, migrant families face difficulties in accessing public schools, as they are not able to choose schools. In terms of the social welfare system-although policy-making has lowered the threshold of access for the floating population-limited resources, a mismatch between supply and demand, inadequate publicity, and other reasons may mean that the welfare system still gives priority to local residents in terms of implementation. It is difficult for migrant families to enjoy equal welfare protection, resulting in serious differences between local and non-local people and a low degree of psychological integration. Third, in terms of influencing factors, female gender and high education levels as personal characteristics, professional skills, personal services, and higher income factors (economic level) have a positive and significant impact on the degree of social integration, reflecting the role of human capital therein. Types of schools and educational expenditures (educational level) also have a significant impact on social integration. Housing conditions and length of residence are not the main factors affecting the social integration of such families. Findings indicate that families still give primary consideration to children’s education, and housing conditions is less important than children’s educational needs.

Key words: migrant children, rural-urban migrant families, social integration, new-type urbanization, Jinhua City, Zhejiang Province