Abstract:

This paper examines the impact of self-employment on the urban integration of the rural migrant population and its mechanism of action, utilizing matched data from dynamic monitoring of floating population and macro urban data. It is found that there is a clear differentiation within the self-employed group, with high market returns for opportunity-type self-employed rural migrants, which is an advantageous group for urban integration, and low market returns for survival-type self-employed rural migrants, which is a disadvantageous group for urban integration. Further analysis of the mechanism shows that the advantageous self-employed rural migrants affect their urban integration through the "housing effect" and "social interaction effect". In order to promote the urban integration of the growing number of self-employed rural migrants in the future, it is necessary to design differentiated integration policies to address the trend of heterogeneous differentiation within the self-employed rural migrant population.

Key words:

Chinese modernization, self-employment; rural floating population, urban integration