The Effect Of Living Condition On Migrants’ Health In Wenzhou,China

Since the implementation in 1978 of the program of economic reforms known as the“Reform and Opening Up” policy,China has experienced massive population mobility from rural to urban areas by the development of market economy and reform of population migration and household registration system.The migrants has fueled significant economic grow and rapid urbanization,but find themselves situated in extraordinarily poor living condition,which can affect their health to a certainly high extent.Therefore,how to improve migrants’ living condition and health status will challenge the fairness and long-term sustainability of the process of urbanization in future,also have been an urgent topic for improving people’s livelihood and promoting the constructing of “Healthy China”.Living condition and health of migrants in urban China have continuously attracted attention from various academic fields,including but not limited to geography,sociology,urban planning and economics.However,scant attention has been paid to how living condition affects migrants’ health in China,which leaves room for improvement and need more empirical evidence from different cases.Previous studies typically focued on housing conditions alone,without paying sufficient attention to the immediate neighborhood context as an essential part of the living condition.Based on the above situation,this study aims to offer a more theoretically informed understanding of living condition and migrants’ health in rapidly urbanizing China by using the survey data covering 571 migrants and 568 local residents in Wenzhou,China and subsequent in-depth interviews with migrants,their employers,local residents and official of relevant government departments.It focuses not only on housing per se but also on surrounding neighborhood and residential segregation;not solely on self-rated health but also on chronic conditions and mental health.In addition to the descriptive analysis,the thesis examines the determinants of living condition and migrants’ health,and documents the effect of living condition on health among migrants and local residents.Many valuable findings have been obtained,and the main conclusions are summarized as follows:First,migrants are at a disadvantage in living condition in terms of sources of housing condition,neighborhood environment,and residential segregation as comparedto those of local residents.Migrants in Wenzhou mainly live in private rental housing,equipped with poor living space,housing facilities and high residential mobility;the proportion of migrants who own house is obviously low.The current poor housing conditions are far beyond settling down for migrants in urban destination.Urban villages have become the major settlements for migrants,generally characterized by vile community environment,poorly maintained public amenities,public space,and high environmental pollution risk.Social interaction and participation at the neighborhood level for migrants are limited.Furthermore.Local residents have overwhelmingly advantage in neighborhood social environment including neighborhood safety,social cohesion and neighborhood sentiment compared to migrants.The location of migrants’ enclave is marginalized and isolated from urban dominant society,characterized by that one-third migrants are exposed to residential segregation.Secondly,Migrants on average show good health status,whose chronic conditions are overwhelmingly better than that of local residents in Wenzhou,whereas there is no significantly advantage in migrants’ self-rated health and mental health compared to local residents.Meanwhile,there is overestimation of self-rated health and health loss mechanism during the rural-urban migration process.The difference of chronic condition between migrants and local residents is reflected in urban-rural household registration(hukou)type,whereas the difference of mental health among them is related to locations of registration.To some extent,the identity difference by household registration has produced a dissipative effect on the health of migrants.The regression models show that relative deprivation has salient detrimental effect on migrants’ health,in addition to demographic variables,socioeconomic status,health behaviors and social support.Third,the regression results confirm that housing condition and neighborhood environment are two important social determinants of migrants’ health after controlling for individual factors.The variables of housing condition which show strong association with migrants’ health include housing facilities,sound-proofing and crowding;those neighborhood variables consist of neighborhood safety,amenities and social disorder.The variables mentioned are maintenance of residential function and livelihood necessities for migrants’ daily life.However,different variables of housing condition andneighborhood environment have different impacts on three health outcomes.The housing condition is significantly linked to migrants’ chronic condition;there are little even no links between housing condition and self-rated health and mental health among migrants;Neighborhood environment shows strong association with the subjective physical health perception,but weak with the objective physical health status.By contrast,among local residents,housing condition and neighborhood environment both are more strongly associated to mental health than other two health outcomes.Moreover,there exists housing and neighborhood effect on health with a wide range of heterogeneity among two groups.Although migrants’ housing condition are significantly poorer than local residents,these associations with health tend to be weaker for migrants than for local residents,while neighborhood environment significantly exhibits stronger association with migrants’ health compared to local residents.Fourth,whether at the macro level or at the micro level,residential segregation is significantly negative on migrants’ health.Relative to residential segregation,migrants’ space-time behaviors are also associated with health.Specifically,residential segregation is achieved through high mobility,which is detrimental to migrants’ self-rated health,while residential segregation increases frequency of long distance moving for migrants,which is adversely associated with migrants’ mental health.Furthermore,social exclusion and discrimination,environmental pollution and neighborhood type are the major pathways linking residential segregation to health in migrants,which cause severe health disparities in cities.There is high probability of mental health impact among migrants who exposed to environmental pollution during the process of residential segregation.Migrants living in urban villages are more likely to report poorer health,compared to commodity-housing estates.There is considerable evidence suggesting that social discrimination is more strongly linked to migrants’ health than segregation.On the contrary,those who have enhanced self-selected isolation and perceived neighborhood satisfaction are more likely to report good health via personal factors such as emotional alleviation and reduced stress.To sum up,the results of the study suggest that residential segregation has been a significant social determinant of health and becomes a social deprivation mechanism through which migrants have been spatially segregated andconcentrated,terribly excluded and discriminated.Finally,contrary to our hypotheses,housing effects on health seems to matter less for migrants in Wenzhou,whereas the associations of neighborhood environment with health are significantly stronger than housing condition among migrants.It is possible that with long time working,higher levels of spatial mobility,uncertainty of settlement intention and low housing requirement,migrants in Wenzhou tend to less attached to their currents temporary lodgment.They are temporary or so-called “floating” population in the cities and thus may not have been sufficiently exposed to their current dwellings to have housing effect manifested.It also follows that it takes time for housing influence on migrants’ health to become visible.Assuming that the livelihood and housing condition of migrants will be improved in the near future,the association between housing and health tends to be equal among migrants and local residents.At same time,due to low social-economic status and vulnerable social capital,migrants’ daily activities and social contacts are confined to neighborhoods and nearby,they tend to be more attached to their neighborhood and exposed to neighborhoods for longer time,loner exposure should contribute to stronger influence for migrants’ health.Moreover,objective living condition perception,especially neighborhood environment,shows more strongly linked to migrants’ health than subjective living condition,including neighborhood safety,neighborhood disorder.