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International Journal of Population Studies

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Finding a job in urban China: A compara-

tive analysis of migrants and natives

*
Kuang-Chi Chang
Fair Labor Association, 1111 19th Street NW, Suite 401, Washington, DC 20036, USA

Abstract: Although migration scholars have demonstrated that migrant workers behave diffe-
rently from locals when looking for jobs, past research in China’s urban labor market has pre-
sented puzzling results by showing that individuals (both rural migrants and urban natives alike)
predominantly rely on social networks when job searching. Using data collected by a 2008
survey in Shanghai, this study nonetheless reveals significant differences between the two
groups’ job searching methods insofar as migrants are less likely to use hierarchy method to
find jobs. I also show that while both migrants and urban natives often relied on network me-
thod when looking for employment, the pattern of such reliance decreases over time. I suggest
job search methods, particular network behavior, can be viewed as strategies that individuals
employ to solve problems in their specific institutional environment, and such strategies are
likely to evolve in response to the changing opportunities and incentives in the corresponding
institutional segments for Chinese migrants and natives.
Keywords: job search, rural-to-urban migrants, urban natives, market transition, China

th
*Correspondence to: Kuang –Chi Chang, Fair Labor Association, 1111 19 Street NW, Suite 401, Washington,
DC 20036, USA; Email: kchang@fairlabor.org
Received: August 4, 2015; Accepted: September 24, 2015; Published Online: October 2, 2015
Citation: Chang K-C. (2015). Finding a job in urban China: A comparative analysis of migrants and na-
tives. International Journal of Population Studies, vol.1(1): 94–108.
http://dx.doi.org/10.18063/IJPS.2015.01.002.

1. Introduction
“How do people find jobs?” is a classic social science research question. This question
yields particularly interesting answers in the context of urban China, not only because of
China’s rapidly developing labor market in its fast-paced market transition, but also be-
cause of the sharp contrast between rural-to-urban migrants and urban natives who have
been segregated from each other spatially, socially, and occupationally (Guo & Iredale,
2004). Before the late 1970s in China, job markets were virtually non-existent. The man-
Copyright: © 2015 Kuang-Chi Chang. datory household registration system (hukou) divided people into two categories based on
This is an Open Access article distri- place of birth and parental hukou status, namely rural or agricultural and urban or nona-
buted under the terms of the Creative gricultural residents (Wu and Treiman, 2004). The Chinese government exerted tight limits
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0
International License (http: //creativeco- over labor and residential movement (Wang, Zuo and Ruan, 2002). Urban residents rarely
mmons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), permit- sought employment on their own, and most had their jobs assigned by the state. People
ting all non-commercial use, distribu- with rural hukou, on the other hand, were prohibited from living in urban areas (Chan and
tion, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly Buckingham, 2008). Job searching has only become a practical issue since the early 1980s,
cited. when rural and economic reforms accompanied a large-scale rural-to-urban migration that

International Journal of Population Studies | 2015, Volume 1, Issue 1 94