Institution And Idea:Urbanization And The Housing Consumption Choose Of Families Of Migrant Workers

In the process of urbanization, many Chinese families of migrant workers must face the choice between purchasing houses in urban areas and building houses in their local rural areas. During the period of social transformation,"the invisible hand" continually pushing the rural families into the real estate market, while there is also "anther invisible hand" constraining the housing consumption of rural families on their local rural areas. Then, what are the factors that influence the housing consumption of rural communities in the accelerating process of urbanization? With the help of fieldwork and statistics, this paper intends to investigate the intrinsic link between the process of urbanization and the choice of rural families on housing consumption through the perspectives of institution transformation and idea change.Our study found that, in the context of institutional change, migrant workers come into the city, but their income from the labor market is not high, These revenues can not make them rent a high-quality house in town, and make it more difficult for them to buy high-priced real estate, so the market mechanism can not meet the housing needs of migrant works. However, the redistribution mechanism for urban communities does not consider housing problems of rural residents. Both of these mechanisms make it difficult to enter the urban living space for migrant worker. Thus, with the free land use right system and revenue from the labor market, appeared "the house-building craze" in the rural communities.Combined with other information we can deduce that, in urban communities, with the city expanding, many city dwellers have more than two sets of real estate, but a large number of migrant workers were in a weak position in the labor market and the housing market. They become the city’s new population, but can not obtain a suitable accommodation. They are not only difficult to buy a house, but also difficult to rent a nice house, which resulted in some of the city’s real estate became uninhabited "ghost town". New urban population can not solve the housing problem so they can not live a normal life here. This has resulted in that they may leave at any time to return their hometown. Therefore, the process of urbanization is also subject to their behavior. It is undoubtedly contrary to the traditional urbanization that migrant workers and their families carried out the production activities in the city, but did housing consumption in rural areas.However, from the perspective of the concept of transformation, we find "the house-building craze" and urbanization are not fully formed paradox. In fact,"the house-building craze" contains individualism and consumerisms which represent urban lifestyle invade the country. Farmers working in cities, and through various media learned of the new values of individualism and consumerism, but they can not really practice this new concept in the city under the influence of the market and redistribution system. Under the influence of consumerism and individualism, urban lifestyle will be introduced to the rural farm field by the migrant workers, so that they practice urban lifestyle more cheaply in this way.In short, under the influence of consumerism and individualism, China is no longer the original "Rural China", which not only reflects the development of urbanization in the traditional sense, more important is reflected in that the urban lifestyle come into the traditional rural society, and the rural areas emerge modern lifestyle transformation. It is worth noting that the urban lifestyle introduced into the rural communities by famer workers is different form the "Counter-urbanization" which introduces the urban lifestyle by middle class.