Migration Patterns and Intentions of Floating Population in Transitional China : The Road for Urban Dream Chasers

This book investigates domestic migration and migration intentions in China from the individual, city, and provincial levels. Since the 1990s, accompanying the rapid urbanization, an important feature of China’s social transition is its large-scale interregional migration, which has reshaped China’s economic geography and population distribution and greatly affected the socio-economic development. The floating population, migrants working and living in the destination cities without local hukou, have aroused wide public concern in the past decades. Based on China’s national population census data and China Migrants Dynamic Survey data, this book comprehensively employs statistical analysis, spatial analysis, network analysis, econometric and spatial econometric methods to analyze the spatial pattern and influencing mechanism of internal migration and migration intentions of floating population from different levels and different perspectives. The research results of this book have significant policy implications for the urban governance on the floating population. The novelty of this book is that it comprehensively investigates domestic migration and migration intentions from the individual, city and provincial levels, combining their spatial patterns and network structures. It not only provides a wealth of case studies for domestic migration research in China, but also broadens the research scope of spatial demography by employing new methods of spatial econometrics (such as MGWR and ESF). This book is suitable for undergraduates and graduates majoring in Human Geography, Regional Economics, Urban Planning and Urban Governance, as well as related researchers and practitioners. 

Tiyan Shen is Professor and Doctoral Supervisor of School of Government, Peking University. He is also Executive Dean of the PKU Institute of Urban Governance and Vice Dean of Beijing Development Institute, PKU. He also served as a member of the Science and Technology Committee of the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development of China, vice president of China Regional Science Association and chief expert of the Major Project of China National Social Science Foundation. His research concentrates on urban planning and urban governance, computable industrial cluster theory, spatial demography, spatial econometrics and spatially integrated social sciences. He has published more than 130 academic papers in international and domestic core journals and more than 10 monographs and translated books. He has also hosted many national projects, obtained many national invention patents and software works and won 5 important awards.

Xin Lao is Associate Professor and Doctoral Supervisor of School of Economics and Management, China University of Geosciences, Beijing. She received her Ph.D. of regional economics from School of Government, Peking University, had been a Visiting Scholar in the Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS) in Harvard University and a postdoctoral fellow in School of Public Policy & Management, Tsinghua University. Her research focuses on China’s internal migration and urban system evolution and related public policies. She has published more than 30 academic papers in international and domestic core journals, a monograph and a translated book, and hosted several national projects.