Rural-urban Migrants’ Social Integration And Their Health

At present, a remarkable phenomenon of the mass ruralpopulation flow into cities emerged in china. Rural-urban migrants willconfront with many practical problems when they promoted thedevelopments of the city. For example, Urban and rural householdregistration system leads to rural-urban migrants is difficult tointegrate into city, social security has not yet covered, and identitymarginalized. Mostly rural-urban migrants live in rural-urban fringezone or regions of the floating population, lower status, language andcommunication barriers, long time discrimination from the urbanresidents, which lead to the life and the development of them in citymore tend to rely on strong relationship network. In work, they usuallytolerate longer work hours, tough work conditions, low wages, badwork environments; in life, can’t enjoy the same medical treatment, endowment, minimum life guarantee and other social welfare asurban residents have, the long-term effects of these various factorsexert an tremendous influence on the rural-urban migrants’mentaland physical health.Using data of 2010 rural-urban migrants’development survey, thisarticle firstly discusses the rural-urban migrants’status of socialsupport network, social integration, mental and physical health ondifferent individual and work characteristics, found that thedifferences are significant. Secondly, analyzes the effects of socialintegration on rural-urban migrants’ mental and physical health andtest the moderating effects of social network by OLS regression andOrdinal Logistic regression. These results indicate: scatteredrural-urban migrants’ have better mental health than concentratedones; it is harmful to rural-urban migrants’ mental health if they werediscriminated; and the better mastering cities’dialect, the betterphysical health. Social support networks moderate the relationshipbetween social integration and mental and physical health: 1) sizes ofinstrumental support networks weaken the effects of discriminationon rural-urban migrants’ mental health; relation configurations ofinstrumental support networks negatively moderate the effects ofmastery of dialect on mental health. 2) sizes of social contact supportnetworks positively moderate the effects of living condition on physical health; configuration of instrumental support networksstrengthen the effects of discrimination on physical health;configuration of social contact support networks weaken the effectsof mastery of dialect on physical health, while the sizes ofinstrumental support networks strengthen these effects. Finally, givesome related suggestion on social integration, social network,education, work condition, professional rights which could haveimproved the rural-urban migrants’living situation on the basis ofdeeply research about consequences.