Invisible Barriers To Subjective Well-Being

Subjective well-being has become a new goal of China’s economic and social development,and it is also the people’s unswerving yearning for a better life.With the advancement of the new urbanization process,the floating population who migrate spontaneously in pursuit of high quality and happy life has become an important part of Chinese people.However,due to the foreign accent and behavior habits that are different from the local culture,floating population is often labeled as "migrant population" in cities,and they are treated unfairly and even suffer prejudice and discrimination in other cities.As a result,floating population cannot share the fruits of economic and social development,and their subjective well-being level is low.In the existing literature research,income has always been considered as an important factor affecting subjective well-being,while in the research involving floating population,more profound cultural factors should be considered,because the acquisition of subjective well-being includes not only the enrichment of material subsistence but also the satisfaction of spiritual civilization.Although the floating population gains higher income in cities,they also face the impact of cultural disparity such as language and customs.Among many indicators of cultural disparity,language is regarded as the living soul of culture.Therefore,from the perspective of language,this thesis will study the influence of dialect disparity on different floating groups and the ways in which dialect disparity affect the subjective well-being level of floating population.In the part of literature research,this thesis analyzes the literature on subjective well-being,and finds that the level of individual subjective well-being is not only affected by income and feasible ability,but also has a significant positive effect on the degree of social integration in the place of migration.Furthermore,based on the research on the relationship between language and social integration of immigrants,this thesis deduces the possible ways of language influencing subjective well-being.Through theoretical analysis,the thesis finally finds that language can lead to "out-group discrimination" against the floating population by the mainstream society in the place of migration through the function of identity,and then lead to cultural exclusion,and finally lead to the process of social integration of the floating population in the place of migration is hindered.Based on this,this thesis holds that the regional cultural differences represented by dialects faced by floating populationmay affect their subjective well-being level through the mechanism of social integration.At the same time,most scholars use immigrants’ self-reported proficiency to study the impact of language on immigrants.However,this method of language measurement is highly subjective and confuses the effect of human capital and language itself.Therefore,based on the geographical distribution of Chinese dialects in China,this thesis constructs an independent language difference index to measure the differences between different regional cultures.So far,this thesis has established the theoretical basis and methodological guidance of the influence of language on subjective well-being,which lays a foundation for the empirical analysis below.In the part of empirical analysis,this thesis uses CMDS data to empirically test the above assumptions.The empirical study of this thesis found that compared with the floating individuals in the same dialect area with their origin,the subjective well-being level of the floating individuals in different dialect areas with their origin is lower.After considering its possible alternative explanatory variables,dialect disparity is still the core explanatory power of floating population’s subjective well-being.In the heterogeneous grouping regression,this thesis found that dialect disparity would reduce the level of subjective well-being of individuals who lived in the place of residence for a short time,but had no effect on individuals who lived in the place of residence for a long time.In different areas of migration,individuals who moved to rural areas were more negatively affected by dialect disparity.Among the urban-rural cross-regional flows,the effect of dialect disparity was the greatest for individuals with rural-rural flows,followed by those with rural-urban flows,and the smallest for individuals with urban-urban flows.Furthermore,the regression results of mediating effect in this thesis show that social assimilation is the mediating mechanism by which dialect disparity affect the subjective well-being of floating population,and dialect disparity reduce individual subjective well-being level by increasing the difficulty of social assimilation of floating population in the destination.In the robustness test of the effect of language disparity,the language disparity between mandarin and floating individuals’ hometown dialects did not significantly affect the level of individual subjective well-being.Finally,through the analysis of the moderating effect,this thesis finds that,in the face of group differences,the attitude and behavior of trying to narrow the disparity,the interactive relationship of getting along well with local people,and the identity of believing oneself to be a local person can reduce the negative effect of dialect disparity on subjective well-being.Based on the above research conclusions,this thesis puts forward policysuggestions from three perspectives: narrowing language differences,introducing integration policies,and promoting group interaction.Finally,the author summarizes the shortcomings of this thesis and the exploration space of future research.