TY - JOUR
T1 - Ethnic enclaves revisited
T2 - Effects on earnings of migrant workers in China
AU - Zhang, Chunni
AU - Xie, Yu
N1 - Funding Information:
We use data collected for a research project entitled ‘Protecting the Rights of Migrant Workers: Theories and Practices’ (09JZD0032), sponsored by the Philosophy and Social Science Foundation of the China National Ministry of Education. The survey was conducted in 2010 by Sun Yat-sen University. Over 4000 migrant workers in nine cities in the Pearl River Delta and 10 cities in the Yangtze River Delta were interviewed. The migrant workers were screened as urban employees who were cross-or within-province migrants, holding rural hukou, and with less than Bachelor-level education. Since a sampling frame of migrant workers was unavailable, the sample was drawn by quota sampling, with the quota computed from official statistical yearbooks.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2016.
PY - 2016/4/1
Y1 - 2016/4/1
N2 - Among rural-to-urban migrants, migrant workers from the same origins tend to concentrate in the same workplaces. When this concentration in a workplace is sufficiently dense, we may consider it a native-place enclave. According to extensive literature on US immigrants, enclave participation may improve the economic well-being of immigrants. This study borrows the same reasoning to evaluate whether or not working in a native-place enclave affects earnings of migrant workers in urban China. We pay particular attention to heterogeneity, not only in how migrants who work in an enclave may differ from those who choose to work in the open economy, but also in varying earnings returns to enclave participation across different groups of migrant workers. Using data from a 2010 survey of migrant workers in the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta, we match enclave workers and non-enclave workers with the same propensity to work in an enclave and then compare their earnings differences. We find a positive average earnings return to enclave participation, although this effect is smaller than that resulting from a naïve comparison. Moreover, we find that migrants with a high propensity to work in an enclave benefit more from enclave participation than those with a low propensity. Our findings generally support the enclave thesis and its role in internal migration in China.
AB - Among rural-to-urban migrants, migrant workers from the same origins tend to concentrate in the same workplaces. When this concentration in a workplace is sufficiently dense, we may consider it a native-place enclave. According to extensive literature on US immigrants, enclave participation may improve the economic well-being of immigrants. This study borrows the same reasoning to evaluate whether or not working in a native-place enclave affects earnings of migrant workers in urban China. We pay particular attention to heterogeneity, not only in how migrants who work in an enclave may differ from those who choose to work in the open economy, but also in varying earnings returns to enclave participation across different groups of migrant workers. Using data from a 2010 survey of migrant workers in the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta, we match enclave workers and non-enclave workers with the same propensity to work in an enclave and then compare their earnings differences. We find a positive average earnings return to enclave participation, although this effect is smaller than that resulting from a naïve comparison. Moreover, we find that migrants with a high propensity to work in an enclave benefit more from enclave participation than those with a low propensity. Our findings generally support the enclave thesis and its role in internal migration in China.
KW - Heterogeneous treatment effect model
KW - migrant workers
KW - native-place enclave
KW - propensity-score matching analysis
KW - rural-to-urban migration
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U2 - 10.1177/2057150X16633580
DO - 10.1177/2057150X16633580
M3 - Article
C2 - 29854419
AN - SCOPUS:85032683695
SN - 2057-150X
VL - 2
SP - 214
EP - 234
JO - Chinese Journal of Sociology
JF - Chinese Journal of Sociology
IS - 2
ER -