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Finding a job in urban China: A comparative analysis of migrants and natives

reached out to their network contacts to gather more reliable information (Chang, 2011),
and more importantly, to secure valuable resources (desired employment) by influencing
the authority’s decision on job allocation (Bian, 1994; 1997).
As with what has happened for rural migrants, employment circumstances for urban na-
tives have changed as China’s state socialism moves deeply into a market transition. Since
the early 1990s, the state has gradually abandoned the job assignment system and stopped
guaranteeing jobs for urban high school and college graduates (Tsui, 2002). As many
state-owned enterprises (SOEs) laid off workers due to restructuring, many urban natives
left the state and collective sectors, finding jobs in private sectors (Cai, Park, and Zhao,
2008). As with employers in the private sector, SOEs have been experiencing higher mar-
ket competition, shouldering greater economic responsibilities, and having more discretion
in hiring employees, resulting in a more merit-based hiring (Guthrie, 1997, 1998; Hanser,
2002). At the same time, instead of looking for jobs in specific work units, many urban
young adults now search for jobs that match their specific skills and qualifications, and
many have found their friends and family to be less helpful because these ties do not al-
ways connect them to those desired jobs (Hanser, 2002).
Yet some other researchers disagree, arguing that social networks should still be in-
fluential in today’s urban job market in China, especially since the advancement in market
transition has yet to remove all institutional constraints (Bian, 2002). Obukhova (2012)
found that China’s college students often used their social networks, in addition to other
alternatives, since their close network contacts have strong motivation to help and thus
often lead to more job offers, albeit not necessarily the best offers, for job seekers. Huang
(2008) also found that urban individuals tended to use social connections to secure
state-sector positions and highly-desired jobs (e.g., better paid, more secured, and reputa-
ble) and “soft-skilled” jobs in which relevant skills and responsibilities are ambiguous and
hard-to-define, such as in areas of managerial, marketing, and public relations. Thus, I
would like to test the following hypothesis and counter-hypothesis: urban natives are
more likely to use market channels than networks in their job searches (Hypothesis
2.1); urban natives are less likely to use market channels than networks in their job
searches (Hypothesis 2.2).

3.3 A Comparison of Migrants with Urban Natives
Many aspects of China’s market reforms and urbanization affect both rural migrants and
urban natives in the same direction, suggesting it is likely that job search methods for both
groups, particularly the reliance on networks, are increasingly parallel to each other. Both
groups have experienced the waning control of the state and the growing opportunities
emergent in the market. In some ways, the two groups have become more similar to each
other over time (Tang and Yang, 2008). On one hand, rural migrants on a whole have been
living in the cities for about three decades, and in many aspects have become less isolated
and more assimilated into the urban core (Tang & Yang, 2008). Many have formed friend-
ships with urban natives outside their migrant communities and have benefited from these
social connections (Chang, Wen, and Wang, 2011). On the other hand, the massive layoffs
from the restructuring SOEs in the late 1990s and the dwindling traditional urban subsidies
have dragged the once more-advantageous urban natives down, have brought the two
groups closer in terms of their earnings and welfare, and have sent many urban natives to
seek opportunities offered by the growing private and service sectors (Solinger, 2002).
Like rural migrants, many disadvantaged urban workers learn about job information
through cheap accesses of internet cafés and low-tech digital devices (Cartier, Castells and
Qiu, 2005). Furthermore, for both rural migrants and urban natives, network usage for job
searches has perhaps become a repertoire that consists of a set of routines or habits that

International Journal of Population Studies | 2015, Volume 1, Issue 1 98