Segregation in China: dynamics, patterns and causes The roles of economic restructuring, the welfare regime and residential (im)mobility

Over the past four decades, the Chinese economy and welfare system have been restructured dramatically along with processes of globalization and marketization. This reshuffled the inherited egalitarian socio-spatial landscape from the socialist period. In this context, this study aims to contribute to a better understanding of the segregation pattern and dynamic at the macro level, as well as how micro-level residential (im)mobility behaviour reproduces inequality and exclusion in China.
Suprisingly, less econommically developed cities were showing comparatively higher segregation levels by education levels and between migrants and local people. Suburbs were becoming the main sources of segregation between migrants and local people in Chinese cities between 2000 and 2010. Residential (im)mobility serves to reproduce urban inequality rather than to disrupt it. People tend to move to homogeneity. But the chances vary based on market affordability, resulting in spatial concentrations, and thus in segregation, of the privileged and the poor. Moreoever, the hukou-based welfare system has left the heavy burden of social reproduction on the shoulder of the family and shaped the migration regime. People are spatially bounded by their family. This could harm people’s socioeconomic opportunities and reify socio-spatial inequality.