Research On Low-income Graduates' Social Space On The Urban Fringe

China has been transforming from an agricultural country to a country of industrialization,urbanization,internationalization and modernization.During the process,popularizing tertiary education in rural areas has been seen as one of the cheapest and most effective ways to accelerate urbanization process.Therefore,Chinese government initiated a college expansion plan in 2000 which has increased the amount of college graduates by 170% from 2000 to 2010.In recent years,the side effect of higher education expansion began to emerge.Usually coming from rural areas,failing to obtain urban household registrations(Hukou),receiving low wages,and having limited access to the urban public housing,the low-income college graduates have attracted much attention from general public.On the meanwhile,thanks to the soaring housing price and fiercely competitive employment market in urban China,many college graduates concentrate on the metropolitan fringe and thus forming a kind of new social space: low-income graduates' social space.However,little academic attention has been paid to this kind of new social space.Based on data collected from the 1% questionnaire survey conducted in one of the largest low-income graduates' enclaves(namely Shigezhuang)in Beijing in 2012,this paper sheds light upon low-income graduates' social space on metropolitan fringe.First,this paper gives a description of their residential space and employment space.Second,drawing on western immigrant theories and hypothesis,this paper tries to illustrate the mechanism behind low-income graduates' social space and answers the following questions: will educational attainment play an important role in their job-housing spatial relationships? For low-income gradutes,will stronger neighborhood social bonds necessarily mean more intentions to stay in the enclave? Third,this paper offers discussions and implications for public policy.The main conclusions are as follows:In terms of residential space,this paper finds that there were 54,417 migrants living in Shigezhuang by the end of 2011.About 70% of them have received tertiary education and under 30 years old.Thus they can be treated as low-income graduates.The survey shows that 69% of the low-income graduates are male and 44% of them are single.Their salaries are higher than their lower educational attainment counterparts,but lower than Beijing's average.The low-income graduates make residential moves frequently,and their housing conditions are very poor.Moreover,since their enclaves are built on rural land and do not have legal status,the low-income graduates are sometimes forced to move to further suburbs.Although they are vunerable in terms of housing issues,the low-income graduates are quite satisfied with the current residence.As to land use pattern,the area of Shigezhuang can be divided into three parts: the mixture of rental housing and commercial housing,the mixture of rental housing and industrial housing,and the mixture of rental housing and owner-occupied housing.As to the spatial distribution of residents,educational attainment serves as one of the most important factors in all the kinds of spatial differentiation.In terms of employment space,this paper finds that the employment rate among low-income graduates is relatively high and most of them are able to find skill-matched occupations.This paper argues that the low-income graduates are vunerable because that they receive relatively low salaries and some of them change jobs frequently.Generally speaking,the low-income graduates have weak intentions to settle down in Beijing.Gender,marital status,employment sector,and job mobility serve as significant factors of settling down intentions.However,their socio-econimic stauts does not matter that much,indicating that the low-income graduates are facing institutional barriers during their integration process in urban China.Besides,with the aid of factorial ecological analysis,this paper reveals the employment spatial differentiation of the low-income graduates and concludes that the spatial distribution of low-income graduates' job locations can be concluded as “layer and sector”.When their residential locations are constrained to metropolitan fringe,low-income graduates' job locations are largely remained in the central city,and their commuting directions are from urban fringe to central city.It is logical to assume that long commuting times will make remote occupations less desirable for the low-income graudates.In terms of job-housing spatial relationships,this paper finds that low-income graduates commute significantly longer than their lower educational attainment counterparts.In addition,when residential location is controlled,with higher educational attainment,low-income graduates are more able to take skill-matched jobs operating in a city-wide labor market.On the one hand,due to a lack of low-skilled jobs nearby,low educational attainment migrants are to some extent constrained to nearby informal sectors serving the residential population,or they work in local collective-owned factories.On the other hand,with higher skill,low-income graduates are more likely to work at the nearby city-wide information technology centers while enjoying shorter commuting distances than average local residents.The paper also finds that years of education,an important indicator of market forces,serves as the strongest predictor of all respondents' commuting distance.When comparing the determinants of commuting distances among low educational attainment migrants and low-income graduates,this paper concludes that low educational attainment migrants are more constrained in terms of the job-housing spatial relationships,while low-income graduates have a greater ability to find a balance between residential and workplace locations,largely because of their higher degree of spatial mobility.In terms of neighborhood social bonds and intentions to stay in the enclave,this paper shows that sense of community,which is one of the three indicators of neighborhood social bonds,turns to be the strongest predictor of intentions to stay in the enclave among all respondents.The results are to some extent surprising,since it is residential satisfaction that has long been recognized as the most important determinant of resident moving or staying intentions.Furthermore,this paper finds that neighborhood social bonds,rather than residential satisfaction,act as the effective intervening variable between socio-demographic characteristics and staying intentions,for social bonds well reflect the inter-generational differences between low educational migrants and low-income graduates.It is also surprising that for low-income gradutes,they express less willingness to stay in the enclave,although they are more satisfied with the current residence.However,factors such as life cycle and housing tenure,which are recognized as important moving triggers among urban residents,show little effect in this study,suggesting that due to institutional barriers,both low educational migrants and low-income graduates follow an unique mobility decision-making process.Based on the above conclusions,this paper argues that compared with low educational attainment migrants,the low-income graduates are more capable of overcoming institutional barriers.Futhermore,this paper gives some policy implications about low-income graduates' residential integration,job-housing spatial distribution,neighborhood planning and design of house layout.