A Research On The Lifestyle Of Shanghai's Floating People

With the large population overwhelming into big cities, the problem of melting into society or city-adaptability of the migratory population thus attracted social scientists as an important subject, which the forming and changing process of their life style becomes the key research work on reviewing the research achievement on life style both home and abroad, I think domestic studies are still stepped on the stage of understanding and absorbing foreign theories. The sociological scholars have already done a great deal of work on life style research; As to geologists, to a certain or some extent, lots of researches have been made by means of Behavioral Geography, Time Geography, and Social Geography, but still lack the systematic, comprehensive and complete studying of life style.Shanghai is the kind of city which has a huge amount of migratory floating population with high accelerating speed. So, Shanghai is chosen as the case study in this dissertation. It is of vital theoretical and practical meanings to set the migratory people as research target.Since, according to different scholars, the statistical diameter chosen to calculate migratory floating population and the exact connotation of life style vary, this dissertation has clearly stated out the definition of the former two items, in order to make this study be more meaningful. On this sense, we discussed the problem from a combined view of Urban Social Geography and Sociology, illustrated a great sum of data gotten from social survey, and assisted by Quality-Based Analytic Approach.The study reveals that: The migratory floating population is so formed under family model which differs from the traditional one. Different features appear on aspect as the family scale, role of family members, family thoughts and family social status, etc. And social problems, such as baby over-born, pregnant before marriage, the education of their left children, are therefore merged. Impacted by political discrimination and self-quality, after having arrived in Shanghai, those migratory floating people are meanly working in informal department, where they have to work for long time and with low incomes, low stability, low or even none social security. Impacted by the nature of jobs, they stay at the bottom class of the whole society, in fields of habitation, consumption, entertainment and social activity. Meanly living in the suburban area, the "Mosaic Structure" is formed, combined with the other social classes, and this is what leads to the diversity of suburban life style, fragments of social dimension, and space deprivation existence. Lack of leisure time verifies the working time do pillage. As to the consumption, it is the robbery of place. And the social activity is a deprivation of social resources, and so on. On the whole, the migratory floating population is being multiple plundered in city. This is exactly what makes that population become the weak group in city.When doing the study of life style of varied area, there exist separation of the life style of migratory floating population in aspects as incoming, educational background, career, gender, age and marriage. It has been found that the female gender is on the weak side even within the weak group.The current domestic urban and suburb economic and social development status come out different obviously, which is so-called the Dual Structure. By observing the migratory floating population, it is easy to find out that they are profoundly influenced by two reference systems, suburban and urban. Influenced by habits, domain, incoming, the economic aim, etc., the life style of migratory floating population clearly presents the close connection of suburban ways of living, especially on the social supporting network. Living and working in city, immersed in the urban culture, compared with former life style, the current one of migratory floating population changed a lot. It is common seen among those people who has stayed in Shanghai for quite a long time that they act out the adaptation of urban life in some aspect and have the longing towards higher social classes. The huge quantity of migratory floating population With a featured life style is called Urban People rooting in Suburbs, and they are forming the new class in city, which let city show out a Dual Structure, leading to separation of urban social dimensional separation. By comparing the migratory floating population and the other urban classes, it has been found that the tendency of social dimensional polarization is being more strengthened.What really important is for the re-construction of system, so that the proper life style of the migratory floating population could be built up, political discrimination could thus be eliminated gradually. A balance urban living environment do have good to overall improving and transforming of the life style of migratory floating population, do have good to promote the orderly social floating of migratory floating population. To this extent, it could push the social to be more harmonious, also could help solving those problems brought by social dimensional polarization.Strong points of this dissertation are as follows. First, to sum up the systematic study of life style to the field of Urban Social Geography is a fresh touch of study in Urban Social Geography field. Second, the change of family life results from the floating of population. According to systematic view point, 10 random variables are introduced, in order to build up the assets and liabilities feedback circulation, and to explain the energetic thematic of family changing. Third, create the Multiple Variable Regression model according to factor of incoming and satisfaction degree of working environment. Forth, following the principle of Human Ecology and Thematic Map of Distribution of Job Opportunities, analysis how it forms the laws of habitation distribution of migratory floating population. Fifth, as to the study of life style, great attention is put on the living place of different life style domain throughout the dissertation. That is to say, this dissertation consider place as an important factor which reflects the life style in a dimensional perspective.