Residential segregation and perceptions of social integration in Shanghai, China

With ongoing urban revolution, Chinese cities are experiencing an influx of migrants, whose integration into urban society becomes an unprecedented challenge. Using a recent survey in Shanghai and adopting a multilevel multinomial logistic model, this paper studies perceptions of social integration, comparing local residents with migrants. While migrants and local residents have very different perceptions of social integration, both individual-level factors and community-level factors such as residential segregation shape perceptions of social integration, and they shape migrants and local residents differently. In particular, residential segregation, especially migrant population size, tends to reinforce perceptions of social exclusion, which imposes challenges on social integration.