Abstract:

Owing to the dynamics of internal migration and the hukou system, urban areas in China always consist of a four-tiered structure of urban locals, urban migrants, new urbanites and rural migrants. This paper aims to examine the differences among these four groups in terms of social capital and to explore how the association between social capital and social trust may vary across the four groups. Data are based on the 2014 China Labour-force Dynamics Survey. Our analysis of 7662 responses first indicates that patterns of social capital in the four urban groups appear to be largely distinct. Second, we find a clear rural-urban division in social trust in the Chinese city: rural migrants and new urbanites tend to be less trusting than urban locals and urban migrants. Among the aspects of social capital under consideration, social network support and neighbourhood attachment are associated with higher levels of social trust, whereas the effects of bonding and bridging civic organizations on social trust are relatively weak. However, these patterns indeed tend to vary across the four groups of urban residents in the cases of civic engagement and social network support. Consequently, these findings suggest that the interplay of individuals’ hukou identities and migration experiences in urban China has an important impact on their social connectedness, which also presents distinctive implications for social trust

Key words: Social capital, social trust, migration, hukou, China