Internal Migrants’ Self-Employment in China: Who are They and How do They Stratify?

• In Event: 120 - Regular Session. Internal Migration

Abstract

As the 2000s witnessed a rapid growth of internal migrants from rural areas in China, this decade also experienced a compositional rise of self-employed migrants within this increasing population. However, little is known about this migrant group in general. This paper attempts to tap into this group in terms of the entry, their market payoffs and their stratification, particularly alone the line of political capitals individuals obtained from rural areas.
Our results show that human capitals and social\political capitals of migrants are negatively associated with entry into self-employment in urban areas. Moreover, the migrant entrepreneurs tend to work longer hours and receive lower average hourly wages (hourly wages in loglinear form). Particularly, among rural-urban migrants, former cadres tend to receive higher absolute values of hourly income, and this advantage is preponderantly attributable to the larger earnings of the cadres among the self-employed; moreover, among the self-employed migrants, cadres’ earning advantage is more pronounced at the high end of the income rung. Our study provides a case where political capitals accumulated in rural areas are able to transfer into economic capitals in the labor market of urban areas in China.

Author

• Qian Song, State University of New York-Albany