Informal Property Rights as Relational and Functional: Unravelling the Relational Contract in China's Informal Housing Market

Zhang, Mengzhu; He, Shenjing

doi:10.1111/1468-2427.12927

Cited by 25 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 70 publications

(115 reference statements)

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“…It is also reported that those dwelling in the dormitory-like housing have a lower ratio of perceiving a fully integrated status (SWB) than those living in informal housing, despite that its regression coefficient is insignificant. Is it reasonable to justify the dispossession by stigmatizing informal housing as a segregated world [ 71 ]? More empirical studies are needed to reveal the relational and functional nature of the so-called “informal” property rights in transitional China.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Housing Tenure Opportunities in the Social Integration of the Aging Pre-1970 Migrants in Beijing

Zhu

Cao

et al. 2022

IJERPH

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This study focuses on the social integration of the pre-1970 first-generation migrants in reformist China, who were born before the year 1970 while getting old in the destination cities. The pre-1970 first-generation migrants are not a homogeneous group but are composed of: (a) those over 45 years old and still working but facing age discrimination; and (b) the elderly granny as nanny assuming the domestic and child-care work for their sons or daughters in the destination cities. We conceptualized and re-defined the aging migrants’ social integration into three dimensions (i.e., participation practices, communication contacts, and subjective perceptions), and used the 2017 Migrant Dynamics Monitoring Survey (MDMS) data from Beijing to measure and explain the varied integration levels among a total of 1267 aging migrant samples in the Beijing metropolis. It is proven that housing tenure matters and housing tenure entitlement would be conductive to beefing up aging migrants’ integration. However, informal housing should not be “stigmatized” as a segregated world, since those dwelling in the informal housing have reported a higher probability of perceiving a fully integrated status (namely subjective well-being, SWB) than those living in the dormitory-like housing. Additionally, an employment-income paradox is found, which shows that higher economic achievement is NOT equivalent to a higher social integration status for the aging migrants.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Housing Tenure Opportunities in the Social Integration of the Aging Pre-1970 Migrants in Beijing

Zhu

Cao

et al. 2022

IJERPH

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“…Albeit extralegal, above transactional relationships between the village and outside users can get self-enforced by common interests and a reputation system, as analyzed by Zhang and He in 2020 and Qiao in 2017 [34,35]. Informal property rights in destinations provide affordable living and entrepreneurial spaces to millions of rural migrants, creating informal housing markets outside of the formal legal system such as a) petty entrepreneurs and traders from rural Wenzhou congregating in Beijing suburb called Zhejiang Village, and b) small-scale garment factory owners and workers from rural Hubei Province clustering in Guangzhou called Hubei Village [36,37].…”

Section: Rent Dissipation In China's Informal Settlements As Frugal U...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Incomplete Urbanization and the Trans-Local Rural-Urban Gradient in China: From a Perspective of New Economics of Labor Migration

Liu

2022

Land

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The urbanization in China is “incomplete” and the migration of non-hukou migrants is circular, wherein rural migrants often keep their rural land in the home village as a social safety net. The informal housing market is one of the main housing providers for migrant workers. Existing studies see informal housing as the migrants’ passive choice under the discriminatory hukou system, while underplaying the migrants’ familial multi-site tenure strategies between village homes and city places. As suggested by New Economics of Labor Migration (NELM), attachment to a place of origin (such as keeping hometown lands), while choosing informal housing at the destination, is a familial utility maximization strategy that can control risks when migrating between locations. Informal housing areas, therefore, become a trans-local rural-urban gradient and semi-urban landscape. We use the 2017 Migrant Dynamics Monitoring Survey data and the binary logistic regression to examine (a) whether hometown landowning is a significant predictor of the migrants’ choosing of a temporary stay in informal settlements in urban destinations, and (b) which kind of hometown land arrangement (farmland or homestead holding or both of them) is the strongest indicator of the higher probability of staying in informal settlements in urban destinations? The data analysis reveals that homestead in hometown is a more prominent pulling factor than farmland to “glue” rural migrants together within an integrated rural land “insurance regime” between the migrant-sending and -receiving places. The land-use and informal housing governance (including urban village demolition) ignore the trans-local nature of the migratory networks and semi-urbanizing dynamics. The traditional analysis of the rural-urban gradient with many landscapes should consider the functional and tenurial linkage between the locations at different points along with the complex migration activities.

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“…Theoretically, this study contributes to a new perspective of understanding the heterogeneous perceived tenure security. Empirically, by unpacking how dwellers develop a perception of the security of their informal tenure, this study deepens the understanding of the formation of SPRH communities, emerging informal settlements that accommodate the disadvantaged lowincome migrant workers and the elderly who are suffering as a result of China's recent housing affordability crisis (He et al, 2019;Zhang and He, 2020a;.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Instead, the state is a contradictory system relatively and unequally open to different actors and thus a site of power struggling amongst different social forces who have their own interests and specific strategies to re-regulate the society (Jessop, 1990). Hence, different state apparatuses may have conflicting interests related to informal settlements and have different and even contradictory strategies to regulate informal tenure (Zhang and He, 2020a). For instance, in China, conflicts of interest related to informal rural land developments exist amongst central authorities (Zhao and Zhang, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Social capital and perceived tenure security of informal housing: Evidence from Beijing, China

Zhang

2021

Urban Studies

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Perceived tenure security is recognised to affect the socioeconomic behaviours and wellbeing of informal settlement dwellers. The provision of perceived tenure security is centred on the developmental agenda as a key policy alternative of tenure legalisation. Despite the consensus about its importance, the reason perceived tenure security is different amongst dwellers remains unclear. To fill this gap, we introduce social capital theory to understand the formation of and disparity in perceived tenure security. The hypotheses are that dwellers living in informal settlements with higher collective social capital and having higher individual social capital tend to feel more secure on their tenure because of higher backing power attained to deter the threats of eviction. We examine the hypotheses using a structural equation model approach to a dataset collected from three small property rights housing communities, which are emerging informal settlements in urban China. Modelling results support our hypotheses and suggest that female, low-income and migrant dwellers tend to feel less secure on their tenure because of the lack of social capital to deter the threats to their tenure. This study contributes to a new sociological explanation for the disparity in perceived tenure security other than the established psychological explanation. Empirically, this study contributes to the understanding of the rapid development of small property rights housing developments in China from the perspective of how dwellers develop security on informal tenure.

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Informal Property Rights as Relational and Functional: Unravelling the Relational Contract in China's Informal Housing Market

Abstract: We thank the IJURR reviewers and the handling editor for their invaluable comments. We are grateful for Pengjun Zhao's great support for our data collection in Beijing.

Cited by 25 publications

References 70 publications

The Role of Housing Tenure Opportunities in the Social Integration of the Aging Pre-1970 Migrants in Beijing

The Role of Housing Tenure Opportunities in the Social Integration of the Aging Pre-1970 Migrants in Beijing

Incomplete Urbanization and the Trans-Local Rural-Urban Gradient in China: From a Perspective of New Economics of Labor Migration

Social capital and perceived tenure security of informal housing: Evidence from Beijing, China

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