Urban Adaptation Of The Elderly From Rural Areas:a Research With Social Capital Perspective

The phenomenon of "the elderly from rural area" is the result of the development of theurbanization and aging in Chinese society, but also is the inevitable result of social change.Our long-term urban-rural dual structure creates a huge gap between urban and rural areas interms of economic and social development level, cultural values, social values, etc.. Therefore,the elderly who came into the city from countryside often encounter a problem of "adapt". Inthis paper, I surveyed20elderly who are living in S Community in Chongqing from ruralareas with depth interviews and participant observation. I found it is necessary for the elderlyto complete the adaptation not only in the new urban family environment but also in the urbancommunities environment.The family status of the elderly from rural areas has decreased and the familyrelationships changed when the family field changed. The living cost has improved, but theygot limited financial support from their children’s families. The old people usually help theirchildren to take care children and do housework. they bear the heavy housework, but thecontribution value of this labor has been neglected. Due to the different lifestyles and valuesof the two generations, the elderly can not get enough emotional comfort from the familymembers, and even cause friction and conflict.The old people’s original social capital with previously accumulated in the rural society isbeing eroded under the new social environment after they came into city, especially theneighborhood mutual assistance relationship faded, it constitutes a great challenge for theelderly to adapt to the new environments. They can no longer get the social support from theacquaintance network easily as before, in particular, it is difficult to get emotional comfortfrom the new social relations, therefore they always has a difficult distraction of lonely. Theyare eager to communicate with others, but the language barrier poses a serious obstacle tostrengthen their identity as a stranger. At the same time, as an older people from rural areas,they also suffered double discrimination of the geographical and age.The elderly from rural areas is not passive, they have their own variety of strategies toreconstitute the social capital, including re-balancing their family relationships and re-knittingthe neighborhood relations. To adapt the home environment, the elderly try to achieveeconomic independence, not to add burden to their children. They are generally willing tohelp their children for child care, housework, to reduce the burden of housework in exchangefor the respect of the child’s selfless love and dedication. Face the intergenerational gap, Theyalso demonstrate sufficient tolerant and usually take "an eye, close one eye" strategy totrivialize nothing. In order to adapt to the urban environment, they are usually very active tomake friends, and gradually to build some small Mutualism System. They are also actively tolook for friends with the common experience or a common topic by exchanging cooking orchild care. They also carry the rural reciprocity habit to the city to creat an acquaintancecommunity. Meanwhile, they also learn to participate the community organization’s activitiesto make friends, to build a sense of belonging and share the community-level social capital.