A Study On The Effect Of Migrant Workers’ Social Network On Their Social Integration

Migrant workers are the peculiar product of Chinese social transformation and urbanization. Urbanization plays an important role to economic development, and a significant characteristic of it is the continuous growth of urban population, the rural population will be changed into urban population, so migrant workers’going to the city and urbanized is an immutable history trend. It’s very important to study on social integration of migrant workers. Recent years, research about migrant workers’social network and social integration has been a lot, but about the deep effect of migrant workers’social network on their social integration is not much. For migrant workers, the network is a favorable way to survive in imperfectly competitive markets, in addition to institutional help. So a study on migrant workers’social network can help us better know about their integration in the city at present and in the future, know the shortcomings, take up institutionalized measures to compensate in policy, in order to make a good preparation to promote China’s urbanization process.For the study on the effect of migrant workers’social network on their social integration in city Dalian, this thesis selects a sample, measuring some basic information and the composition of its social network. Taking previous outcomes in social network for reference, the thesis divided social network into the emotional discussion network, the interactive communication network and the actual job help network, because these three types are main ways which migrant workers depend on in the city. The author divided social integration into economic integration, cultural integration and psychological integration, and studied that migrant workers will return home or stay in the city, treating it as reference for social integration in the future. In analysis part, the author first discussed the scale and composition of emotional discussion network, interactive communication network and actual job help network, and what factors can effect the scale and composition. Then, the author also analyzed current situation of social integration, to discuss different levels in social integration. Social integration not only includes accommodation and identification of culture and lifestyle in new social environment, but also inheritance and maintenance in original social environment. So when discuss the degree of social integration, it can be classified into assimilation, integration, separation and marginalization. Finally, the author analyzed the relationship between the scale and composition of social integration and the three levels of social integration.In this study, I will survey the location selection in Dalian, Dalian is the city that is a coastal city of northeast city level is relatively high. In the NPC and CPPCC, the core city was designated as the revitalization of northeast old industrial base, the comprehensive competitiveness of the city ranked eighth in the country. Therefore, Dalian is attracting millions of migrant workers by virtue of high level of economic development.The study found that the bigger scale of emotional discussion network, interactive communication network and actual job help network is, the better situation of migrant workers’economic integration, cultural integration and psychological integration is. The stronger heterogeneity between migrant workers and members of emotional discussion network and interactive communication network, they can better adapt to culture and lifestyle in new social environment, and forget culture in original social environment. The stronger homogeneity between migrant workers and members of emotional discussion network and interactive communication network, they can better maintain original cultural and psychological identity, and cannot adapt to culture and lifestyle in new social environment. On economic level, homogeneous social network plays a more important role when migrant workers begin to enter into the city due to lack of network and trust, but, in later economic integration, the higher proportion of heterogeneous social network, the better situation of social integration, and those migrant workers prefer to stay in the city in the future. So, no matter homogeneous or heterogeneous social network plays both positive and negative effects on social integration. Only keep balance between the two aspects can play their respective role and realize their biggest function. If people just pursue one of them but regardless of the other, it will never realize social integration in the true sense. More homogeneous or heterogeneous social network relationship depends on the growth of the scale of social networker members, but not every migrant worker begins to enter a city can be companied with his relatives and fellow-villagers, he probably lack of chance and approach to interact with heterogeneous group in later development. At the end of the thesis, the author put forward some suggestions to apply institutionalized way to compensate non-institutionalized way on the shortcomings of effects on social integration.