Institutional Barriers Of Rural - Urban Migration

This paper discusses what changes of the behavior will be made by the rural-urban migrants under the discriminatory institutions against the migrants in the cities.The institutional obstacles segment the rural-urban migration into two processes: emigrating from the original domicile to the target destination and settling in the targeted destination.In the first process, these laborers with a larger stock of human capital would be prepared to migrate to their destination even without any assistance because they have higher expectations for their incomes; those with less human capital and lower expectations for their incomes would rather to wait for the social assistance.Institutional obstacles increase the cost of living of the migrants in the destination and reduce the net benefit of migration, which causes more migrants to tend to depend on the help of social net.In the destination, the institutional obstacles distort the choices of migrant. The contribution of the human capital to the income is reduced, for the migrants are often segmented into the secondary labor market. On the one side, some migrants have no incentives to participate in the vocational .training, for they do not expect to settle down. On the other side, the employers have no motivations to supply the training plan for the migrants who have higher probabilities to resign and return to their home villages.At the labor market in the destination, those with more human capital obtain higher incomes correspondent with their higher productivity. The higher incomes can make up for the increase of their cost of living caused by the discriminatory system. Therefore, they tend to settle down in the destination. Those with less human capital and lower incomes cannot afford the rising cost of living caused by the discriminatory system, so they tend to return to their original domicile.The laborers who make two different choices need different contacts: those with more human capital and with intention to settle down in the destination would like to make friends with the local urban citizens (their social relations) to get assistance from these urban friends in their settlement in the destination. Those with less human capital and without intention to settle down would not have the motivation to make local urban friends, which need more expense and means higher cost of living. From above, we find that the choice, of friends would be more decided by the level of human rather than random choices.