Rural-urban Migrants’ Human Capital,Social Capital And Social Integration

Rural-urban migrants settling in the city, by improving working and living conditions, enhancing the social status as well as living in harmony with citizens, achieves social integration of economic, cultural and psychological aspects, which not only helps improve vulnerability and weak position of rural-urban migrants but also conforms to the trend of urbanization in our country, as well as has an important practical significance on building harmonious society and a well-off society in an all-round way. However, there is a lack of human capital stock, resulting from lower level of education of rural-urban migrants, fewer training opportunities and longer engaged in physical labor and longer working hours which can’t ensure their health; Less interaction with citizens living in urban and long-term discrimination by citizens make migrant workers prefer to rely on consanguinity and affinity in order to obtain instrumental, emotional and social support; Job instability and lack of rights and interests safeguard of rural-urban migrants exacerbate vulnerability of their livelihoods, which influences lifesatisfaction of rural-urban migrants. Currently, there are morequalitative and less quantitative research analyses on rural-urbanmigrant workers from the human capital and social capitalperspective, lack of systematic interpretation on social integrationfactors. Based on the vulnerability of livelihoods perspective, thisdissertation explains the impact of human capital and social capitalon social integration, and further reveals the role of life satisfactionin these relationships.Survey data of social integration of rural-urban migrants in2013are adopted. First, this dissertation discusses the status quo ofvulnerability of their livelihoods, human capital, social capital, lifesatisfaction and social integration of rural-urban migrants ofdifferent individual characteristics and job characteristics, findingthere are significant differences on various conditions ofrural-urban migrants under the different characteristics.Specifically:(1) the difference in livelihood vulnerability in terms ofage, marital status and region is significant; there are somedifferences in livelihood vulnerability in terms of working time,working environment and working type.(2) There are somedifferences in gender, age, marital status and region in terms ofhuman capital, and the difference in age is the most significant one. The differences in working time, working environment and workingtype in terms of human capital are more significant.(3) Thedifferences in the emotional and social number of people thatmigrant workers of different genders get from different sources aremore significant, and age is the main factor to affect social capital,and there are some significant differences in instrumental supportand social support in terms of marital status, and there aresignificant differences in the way migrant workers get intrumentalsupport. The only factor to affect instrumental support and socialsupport is working environment.(4) Migrant workers of centralregion get higher life satisfaction, and migrant workers of normalworking hours and better working conditions get higher lifesatisfaction.(5) In terms of economic integration, there aresignificant differences in monthly income and occupational class interms of gender, while there are more significant differences inmonthly income and estate in terms of age, marital status andregion. Working environment only shows significant difference inmonthly income, and monthly income and occupational classchange with working type. In terms of cultural integration, gender,age, marital status and region are the important factors to affectthe maintain of hometown culture. The most significant differencein working hours is cultural integration. In terms of mental integration, the impact on nonfarm identity, social distance andsense of belonging from age and working environment is the mostsignificant, while age and working type keep the second significantfactors.Secondly, Ordinal, binary logistic, multi logistic and OLSregression model are used to analyze impact of human capital andsocial capital on economic, cultural and psychological integration,exploring the mediating role life satisfaction plays in this process.The result is that human capital and social capital migrant workershave are the most important factors to influence social integration.(1) Health, education, working years and training experience have asignificant positive correlation with social integration. Humancapital, such as health, education and working years etc., expectfor training, has a significant positive correlation with culturalintegration and mental integration.(2) Migrant workers withinstrumental, emotional and social support from residents havebetter cultural and mental integration condition.(3) Lifesatisfaction plays a partial mediating role in the relationshipbetween human and social capital as well as social integration, thatis, on the one hand, the increase of human capital and social capitalstock of migrant workers can directly promote their socialintegration, on the other hand, more human capital and social capital can improve urban life satisfaction of migrant workers andpromote social integration.On the basis of empirical results, this dissertation from buildinga public health care system, vocational education and skills trainingsystem, by the media guide, building contacting platform forconneting migrant workers with urban citizens, strengthening theinterests of security, improving aspects of urban life satisfactionand putting forward some policy suggestions to improve thelivelihoods of the vulnerability of migrant workers, enhances humancapital and social capital, and ultimately promotes socialintegration.