Research On Occupational Status Attainment Of New Urban Immigrants

Since the Reformation and Opening-up, along with the procession of China modernization and urbanization, a vast majority of immigrants have been flooding into large and medium-sized cities in search of opportunities of work and life. New Urban Immigrants, especially the white-collar immigrants, are pillars of the realization of modernization and urbanization in China, contributing tremendously to the economic and social development of the immigration place. As the pivot point that new immigrants work and live in cities, occupationalstatus directly influence their situations of survival and residence. Therefore, it is greatly significant to research on the occupational status attainment of new urban immigrants, which is conducive to understand the evolution of labor market during the Reformation andOpening-up, as well as the history and features of the transition of China's economy and social.In this thesis, the author focuses on the occupational status attainment of new urban immigrants, that is to say, on the process, results and influencing factors in the course of new urban immigrants attaining occupational status. Specifically, there are two issues on view that the author highlights: one is about the methods of job-hunting and its influencing factors, the other is about the results and other influencing ones.Not the capacity of individual human capital but the network of social relationship impacts on the occupational status attainment in labor market. The past researchers have successively put forward some theories, such as Human Capital, Weak Ties, Social Resources/ Social Capital, Structural Holes, Strong Ties and the like, to explain the difference in individual occupational status attainment, but there are some biases resulting in a number of theoretical disputes. However, the author's aim is to make a comparative research by means of ting up different theories together, directly dialoguing with them about the empirical issue on occupational status attainment of new urban immigrants, which result is to find out the border and conditions applicable of different theories.The empirical evidences applicable are from 539 questionnaires on the occupational status attainment of new urban immigrants in Shanghai. Through analyzing empirical data, our findings are as follows:(1) In terms of job-hunting methods, whether or not take possession of human capital and social capital has distinctive effect on new urban immigrants.When seeking for jobs by networks, they prefer the strong ties to the weak ones. Besides, the social capital of structural holes has no effect on their job-hunting methods.(2) As the result of occupational status attainment, the social capital possessed by new urban immigrants has distinguished effect on their occupational income, prestige and satisfaction. What position, whether in power or not the relative is in his/ her unit have no effect on income of new urban immigrants, whereas, the former has positive correlation with their occupational prestige as same as the latter to satisfaction. Although human capital based on their education background, opposite to social capital of ties intensity and structural holes, has marked effect on occupational status attainment of new urban immigrants, the professional technical certification does not work, for the training number is only positively inclined to occupational satisfaction. Compared with the relative contributions of human capital and social capital respectively to occupational status attainment of new urban immigrants, our findings is that, as for occupational income, more contribution is from social capital while human capital is more contributory in individual occupational prestige, in addition, there is no discrepancy between the both in occupational satisfaction.In all, the research on the occupational status attainment of new urban immigrants is indicative of the following two aspects. One is to show that accompanied by the continuously rising market power it increasingly affects individual microeconomic behavior, while, on the other hand, Chinese cultural tradition still remains powerful influence, with the transition of economy and social and the increasing improvement of market economy in China.