Abstract

Over the past four decades, China has been involved in an economic globalization process that has generated millions of job opportunities, thereby encouraging population migration. Many studies discuss the link between economic globalization and international immigration, but little systematic research explores its impact on internal migration. By analyzing city-level data since 2000, we find that foreign direct investment (FDI) encourages internal migration by investing in labour-intensive export sectors and such impact evolves over time and space. Specifically, in 2000, 2005 and 2010, FDI promotes long-distance migration through investment in exports. In 2015, the FDI effect disappears and exports independently encourage long-distance migration. In contrast, short-distance migration is mainly driven by local marketization. These findings indicate that in China, economic globalization and local marketization shape migration in different ways.

*Full text link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/psp.2612