Homesteads, Identity, and Urbanization of Migrant Workers

Weite Cheng, Shuiyuan Cheng, Haitao Wu and Qian Wu ()
Additional contact information
Weite Cheng: School of Modern Industry for Selenium Science and Engineering, Wuhan Polytechnic University, Wuhan 430023, China
Shuiyuan Cheng: School of Modern Industry for Selenium Science and Engineering, Wuhan Polytechnic University, Wuhan 430023, China
Haitao Wu: School of Business Administration, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Wuhan 430073, China
Qian Wu: Department of Economics, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211, USA

Land, 2023, vol. 12, issue 3, 1-21

Abstract: The key to advancing urbanization is to promote the urban integration of numerous migrant workers. Two stages of decision making are involved for migrant workers, including residence (staying in cities) and settlement (transferring hukou into cities). The homestead is a necessity for migrant workers to keep their “peasant” status, which will further affect migrant workers’ identification with cities and influence their decision making towards urbanization. This paper uses data from the 2017 China Migrants Dynamic Survey (CMDS), through the coarsened exact matching (CEM) method and the analysis of mediation effects, to estimate how homesteads influence migrant workers’ urbanization intention and how the sense of identity serves as a mediator variable in this mechanism. Empirical results show that the ownership of homesteads is negatively correlated with migrant workers’ urbanization intention. Migrant workers with homesteads are 1.2% less likely to stay and 4.4% less likely to settle down in cities compared with their counterparts who do not have a homestead. In addition, identity plays a mediating role in the influence mechanism of homesteads on migrant workers’ urbanization intention. That is, the homestead has an indirect effect on migrant workers’ willingness to stay and settle down in cites through the sense of identity, aside from its direct effects. The mediation effect accounts for 20.87% of the total effect for willingness to stay and 25.63% of the total effect for willingness to settle down. This paper also represents how these coefficients vary by different regions and migration distances. Therefore, policymakers should provide institutional support for correctly guiding migrant workers to “abandon their land and enter the city” and strengthen their sense of identity to the city.

Keywords: homestead; identity; urbanization; migrant workers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/12/3/666/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/12/3/666/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:12:y:2023:i:3:p:666-:d:1094916

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().