Research On The Identity Of The Urban Underclass

This thesis studies on the identity of the urban underclass by angles of view ofboth people’s evaluations and Self-Identity, with the questionnaire which bases on acombination of quantitative and qualitative methods. The study focuses on theunderclass’s Self-Identity from four dimensions: people’s self-positioning, theattribution, social attitude, the logic of the behavior.In social cognition about―urban underclass‖, social public pointed out thecharacteristic of the underclass: low income, Life without a security, without powerand so on. From the professional identity, professions such as the city junkmen,vagrants and beggars, cleaners are chosen to be the underclass by social public. Thedefinition of an urban low-income family in Harbin is set at lower than RMB1187per person per month, according to public choice.The subjective stratum identification of the underclass has the characteristicsas follows: the people at the bottom strongly agreed with the low status of the power,the economic and the prestige; the identity condition shows internal heterogeneousproperties related with gender, profession and literacy; Parent’s social status havethe most impact on self-positioning.This study discusses the attribution of people from different social strata:external attribution is underclass’s choice which is different with public’s internalattribution as the reason of mobility; gender, profession and age have a significantoverall impact on underclass’s choice. In the psychosocial attitudes, theunderclasses are less satisfied with their lives and are relatively sanguine with lifeexpectancy; the underclass has strong feeling of deprivation.In the logic of behavior of the underclass, through analyze the strategies ofdefending rights used by the underclass and what affect these strategies selected, thestudy found the collective action is not the first choice with the guidance of thesubsistence ethic of safety first。Comprehensive view, the following problems on the identity of the underclassare worth discussion：the underclass’s evaluations in a different direction than itsSelf-Identity; the Class identification of the underclass would be passed to their nextgeneration; Rural folk have higher life evaluations；the underclass urgently want togain a reputation and younger people in the bottom tend to choose violent resistance.