Emerging Precarious White-collar Workers And Their Socio-spatial Characteristics,Mechanism And Effect In Metropolitan Area

Along with higher educational expansion,more and more graduates found employment in less prestigious and more diverse graduate jobs.Their relative advantage over the low-educated laborers has gradually been weakened.As a result,the links between education attainment and occupational prestige has declined year by year.In general,they can only find low-skilled white-collar jobs with less income,lower stability,and inadequately social security.They have become a new vulnerable group in the city.Facing the huge pressure of life in the big cities,they often mock themselves with terms such as "IT migrant workers," "big data migrant workers,""painting migrant workers," and "art migrant workers." The problems reflected by this issue have drawn attention.This study defines these graduates as precarious white-collar workers.They have derived from disadvantaged groups,but also belong to the sub-group of urban white-collar workers.As a result,the spatial characteristics of these precarious white-collar workers are different from either the traditional disadvantaged groups in the city or the urban new middle class.In this paper,I firstly reviewed the origin of white-collar workers and their relationship with middle-class and higher education,and then makes a theoretical definition of the concept of precarious white-collar workers.Based on the overview on present research situation about precarious white-collar workers and socio spatial dialectic,I proposed a theoretical analysis framework for precarious white-collar workers.Then,through the survey of graduates at the city level,this paper determines living styles,living locations,and housing affordability of the new employed graduates.Furthermore,I analyzed the habitable space of low-income graduates in Nanjing,and then selected the research communities.In order to analyze their social spatial characteristics,I obtained information on family backs,education works,and consumption by investigating the survey of rental households with college education or above.Finally,I will comprehensively analyze the general dynamic mechanism of the formation of white-collar workers in China and their social space effects on exploring the counter-measures for the negative effects caused by precarious white-collar workers,which suits on our national conditions.The main conclusions of this study include:(1)The essence of the situation that many college students are trapped in the new vulnerable groups of precarious white-collar workers in cities is that they cannot rely on their diplomas and workforce skills to build a full career closed,and thus weakened their competitiveness in the labor market and the right to speak.At the same time,the low-skilled labor limits the development of their career space,and this is the most important reason for the stratification and differentiation of white-collar occupations.(2)The characteristics of precarious white-collar workers' social space show the dislocation of employment promises and professional status,the mismatch between work-consumption space and living space,and the vagueness and contradiction of social identity of groups.(3)The formation of precarious white-collar workers and their spatiality drivers mainly come from the structural forces of the society,the market power of the space,and the correction of the culture.(4)If the precarious white-collar workers are trapped in the "weak" status for long time,they will have a certain negative impact on the social space.(5)To achieve further upward mobility,precarious white-collar workers must focus on skill development,while governments must tear down the restriction of social structural factors and pay more attention to the right of the city.