The Impact Of Social Capital On The Employment Quality Of The New Generation Of Migrant Workers

Migrant workers are an important force in China’s new-type urbanization and rural revitalization.Promoting fuller and higher-quality employment is related to people’s livelihood,economic development and the future of the country.In recent years,the scale of employment of the new generation of migrant workers born after 1980 in urban areas has shown a steady growth trend.According to the monitoring data of the National Bureau of Statistics in 2021,the total number of migrant workers in the country is 292.51 million,of which 48.2% are 40 years old and below,and the new generation of migrant workers is gradually becoming the main body of migrant workers.Although the number of new generation migrant workers is increasing,their employment status shows the characteristics of "short-term work" due to factors such as their household registration status and vocational skills.In order to solve the problem of low employment quality of the new generation of migrant workers,the state has successively issued a series of policies such as the "Plan for Upgrading the Vocational Skills of the New Generation of Migrant Workers(2019-2022",aiming to improve the employment stability of migrant workers and ensure their employment quality.However,despite the increasing support for the employment of new-generation migrant workers and the fact that this group has more and more flexible employment options than ever before,they still face many difficulties in achieving fuller and higher-quality employment due to the fact that they are not yet fully covered by urban public services and their access to vocational skills training is still limited.At the same time,a lot of theoretical research has been conducted on the employment of the new generation of migrant workers,focusing on both public services and skills training to find ways to improve the employment situation of the new generation of farmers.In fact,most new generation migrant workers still rely on social capital such as friends or family members to find more employment opportunities.So,can social capital alleviate the precarious employment of new generation migrant workers and thus improve their employment quality? This is still being explored by the theoretical community.Based on this,this paper aims to explore the mechanism and effect of social capital on the new generation of migrant workers,in order to grasp the new changes in the employment demands of the new generation of migrant workers,further optimise and improve the relevant employment promotion policies,and promote the integrated development of urban and rural areas.With the above research objectives in mind,this paper examines the mechanisms and effects of social capital on employment quality through the mediating variable of employment stability of new generation migrant workers from the perspective of social capital.Specifically,this paper first selects data from the 2018 China Labour Force Dynamics Survey(CLDS)database,constructs social capital and employment quality measures and calculates their composite indices,and then constructs a model to empirically test the effects of both using ordinary least squares regression(OLS).On this basis,the mediating variable of employment stability and the moderating variable of educational attainment are constructed to analyse the impact mechanism,followed by a heterogeneity analysis by classifying social capital into formal and informal,using instrumental variables to address the endogeneity issue,and finally proposing policy recommendations.Through the analysis,the paper draws the following conclusions:Firstly,Social capital has a significant positive impact on the employment quality of new generation migrant workers.The richer the social capital,the higher the employment quality of new generation migrant workers.Secondly,the effect of different types of social capital on the employment quality of new generation migrant workers is not the same.Among them,the effect of formal social capital on the employment quality of new generation migrant workers is more significant,while the effect of informal social capital on the employment quality of new generation migrant workers is not significant.Thirdly,using the employment stability of new generation migrant workers as a mediating variable,we find that social capital is significantly and positively related to employment stability,and the employment stability of new generation migrant workers is also significantly and positively related to their employment quality,indicating that social capital can influence the employment quality of new generation migrant workers through their employment stability.Fourthly,after the introduction of individual education level as a moderating variable,the interaction term between education level and social capital,the regression result is significantly positive,indicating that education level will increase the social capital of new generation migrant workers to a certain extent,thus further improving the employment quality.Finally,based on the above findings,this paper proposes countermeasures from three aspects: new generation migrant workers should strengthen their own vocational skills learning;employers should increase the protection of the legal rights and interests of new generation migrant workers and improve the popularity of trade unions;and the government should strengthen financial support for vocational training of new generation migrant workers.