Abstract:

Migration in China is not a simple one-step process and usually involves two stages: the initial stage for migrants to leave the place of origin and arrive in the first place of destination, and the subsequent stage for them to move across different cities before their finally settlement. So far most studies have been focused on the first stage and have neglected the subsequent stage, which is nevertheless indispensable for a complete understanding of migration patterns in China. Based on the individual-level event-history data from a random sampling questionnaire survey of 2 977 migrants in Fujian Province in 2009, this article examines patterns and characteristics of migrants’ mobility across cities in the subsequent stage of their migration, using various migration indicators and survival analysis. The article first analyses migrants’ mobility across cities in terms of mobility frequency and intensity, the destination city’s size categories and distance categories, the duration in the first destination cities, the mean residence time in each destination cities, and the temporal distribution of mobility events by their sequence, and then analyzes the time-space paths of the migrants’ mobility across cities from a gender perspective. The results show that migrants’ mobility across cities is a common phenomenon, and its mobility patterns are complex in terms of both migration direction and spatial trajectory. Migrants tend to move to places of longer distance and larger cities with the increase in the number of times of their subsequent migration; but compared to that of the initial stage migration, the distance of the subsequent stage migration is usually shorter. The majority of migrants’ movements across cities occur in the early period of their migration career, and they become less mobile with the increasing duration of their migration. On gender differences, although the mobility frequency of women migrants is lower than men migrants, their mobility intensity is stronger than men migrants. Furthermore, women migrants are more likely to move to large-sized cities than men migrants, and men migrants tend to move in wider spatial ranges and stay in the destination cities for longer periods of time, with no preference in their selection of destination cities between small-sized and large-sized cities. These results suggest that there are some temporal and spatial characteristics of migrant subsequent stage of migration that have not been revealed by conventional research treating migration as a one-step and gender-neutral process, and more efforts are still needed to achieve a better and more complete understanding of them.

Key words: migrants, mobility across cities, time-space paths, gender difference, Fujian Province