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Kuang-Chi Chang

has brought millions of job-seeking rural migrants to cities. For many urban residents,
searching for jobs has also become increasingly important when the state employment
system began to shrink and the state-owned enterprises underwent reconstruction and
spawned massive lay-offs during the 1990s (Solinger, 1999).
Migrants, both international and internal, tend to utilize different methods to find jobs
from non-migrants (Wilson and Portes, 1980; Bailey and Waldinger, 1991). Because mi-
grants usually have less access to formal resources helpful for job-hunting, they tend to
rely on personal networks as relatively inexpensive and reliable sources for job informa-
tion (Aguilera and Massey, 2003). An intriguing feature for the Chinese case, however,
seems to be a predominant reliance on social networks for both rural-to-urban migrants
and urban natives when they seek jobs Bian, 1997; Bian and Huang, 2009). This conver-
gence in the reliance on social networks for job searches between the two groups, however,
has yet to be adequately examined by current research. Evidence supporting the important
role of social networks on job searches comes from either research focusing on rural mi-
grants solely or from studies based on urban natives exclusively (Bian, 1997; Roberts,
2001). Those few exceptions (Fan, 2002; Zhang, 2010; Bian and Huang, 2009) that did
compare rural migrants and urban natives also used older data from the 1990s, and the
findings were inconsistent.
This paper seeks to fill the gap in the existing literature by comparing the job search
patterns of rural migrants with those of urban natives using survey data collected in 2008
in Shanghai, China. This analysis is particularly important considering the rapid pace of
China’s economic and social transformation. While most researchers agree that social
networks generate valuable resources that have helped people overcome institutional con-
straints and find employment (Lin, 2003; Chang, Wen and Wang, 2011), we still know
little about how the dramatic market growth and institutional changes in the past fifteen
years have influenced the ways people find jobs in China. Thus, this paper asks based
upon data from 2008, do Chinese rural migrants and urban natives continue to rely on so-
cial networks when many institutional constraints have been lessened?
2. Rural-to-urban Migration and Job Markets in Urban China

China’s market reforms in the past three decades have led to a booming economy accom-
panied by a large-scale rural-to-urban migration. Compared to internal migration in other
time periods of Chinese history or in other countries, rural-to-urban migration in China is
unique given the long-standing hukou system implemented in the late 1950s that has di-
vided the country into rural versus urban areas as two distinct dichotomous sectors. The
urban sector is more advantageous by almost all criteria. Before the economic reforms of
the 1980s, rural residents were prohibited from living in cities as a resident and were de-
nied access to well-paid, more permanent jobs as well as other state-subsidized social ben-
efits available to urban residents, such as free housing, childcare, medical insurance,
pensions, education, and food subsidies (Chan and Buckingham, 2008; Zhang, 2001). Al-
though its regulations have become more relaxed, the hukou system is still in effect today
and has had a long-lasting impact on job markets in China (Chang, Wen, and Wang, 2011;
Chan, 2008). Most rural migrants encounter a variety of occupational restrictions and dis-
crimination in urban areas (Fan, 2002), and typically fill jobs in cities that many urban
natives find inferior and undesirable (Roberts, 2001; Li, Stanton, Fang et al., 2006). Urban
natives, by contrast, are more likely to hold white-collar jobs (Meng and Zhang, 2001).
Newer evidence, however, has shown an improved economic, social, and political situa-
tion for migrant workers, as well as a shrinking urban-rural divide in the 2000s (Tang and
Yang, 2008). China’s recent economic boom has led to a shortage of urban labor, espe-
cially in areas such as construction and manufacturing, which not only means more job

International Journal of Population Studies | 2015, Volume 1, Issue 1 95