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Labor market segmentation and migration are two phenomena that are dramatically reshaping the spatial, economic, and social relationships of many urban cities in both developed and developing countries. To this point, the bulk of Chinese literature falls within the context of area studies, without much effort to link Chinese migration and emerging...
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... the persistent flow of non-state sponsored Henan migrants to Xinjiang most likely can be explained due to the significant role of native place ties and guanxi, or social networks, which remain important determinants of migration (Ma and Xiang 1998) All the Uyghur migrants in our survey are from within Xinjiang, that is, they are intra-provincial migrants. Figure 2 highlights the counties of origin in Xinjiang for both Uyghur and Han intra-provincial migrants. About 75 percent of Uyghur migrants are from the southern counties of the province, with Kashgar (41.5 percent), Akesu (13.5 percent), Atushi (9.5 percent), and Hetian (7.8 percent) as the leading counties of origin. ...
Citations
... The CHES data includes detailed socio-economic and demographic information on more than 7,000 rural households and 3,000 urban households from nearly 700 villages and 30 city prefectures spread out across seven provinces and regions: Hunan, Guizhou, and Guangxi, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Qinghai, and Xinjiang. The CHES data are published in various high-quality journal outlets (Howell, 2022b(Howell, ,a, 2020Howell et al., 2018;Howell, 2013Howell, , 2018Howell and Fan, 2011;Howell, 2011Howell, , 2017b. ...
... In many Muslim minority countries, the cases of unfair treatment toward Muslims at the workplace are still widely reported today. For example, the discrimination against Muslim employees in the US (Weise, 2019), some European countries (Di Stasio et al., 2019), and in China, where despite 22 million of its citizens are Muslim, discriminative issues concerning these particular religious believers are continuing until now (Howell, 2011;Raza, 2019). The underlying root of these misconducts toward Muslim workers may also be due to the nuance of the secular setup in Muslim minority countries where religion and work domain are placed separately (Ali, 2010;Ashforth & Vaidyanath, 2002;Etherington, 2019;Gregory, 2014). ...
The importance of religion in management studies is rising and is better appreciated nowadays. As one of the major acknowledged and one of the most misunderstood religions globally, Islam and all things related to Muslims in the workplace should also gain more attention from the management scholars to promote better understanding and mutual respect. This paper tries to answer the broad question of 'what are the main themes of Islam in Human Resources Management (HRM) and Organizational Behavior (OB) discourses?'. The paper identifies three focal themes within the topic: current workplace circumstances for Muslims; Islamic religiosity from HRM and OB perspectives; and Islamic viewpoint of work. Through the narrative review approach, this paper establishes three contributions. The first contribution is to discuss the essential issues of Islam and Muslims in HRM and OB discourses. Second, this paper bridges the contemporary HRM-OB discourses and Islamic teachings. Third, this paper suggests possible discussion points for further advancement of Muslims in the workplace topic.
... A few qualitative studies conducted among graduates provide evidence that women graduates meet greater challenges in developing their professional careers, regardless of continuous changes in the positions of women in Chinese society. In a study of the relationship between labor-market segmentation and graduate migration in Xinjiang, Howell (2011) found that women migrants were located within the lower segment of the local labor market, while Moskal's research (2020) on international graduate returnees showed that women were often discouraged from displaying occupational interests and taking part in labor-market competition in China. Howell's and Moskal's findings are in line with recent studies on Chinese students' motivations for overseas education that show that young Chinese women planned to study abroad because they saw their educational mobility as a way to manage risks of significant gender bias in China's urban labor market, especially in the expanding private sector (F. ...
This article addresses the cumulative effect of graduate migration and opportunities for career development. Using data from an online survey of 756 master's-level graduates educated in China and the UK, it examines their geographical mobility patterns and reveals significant differences between Chinese students who graduated from domestic universities and those who were educated abroad. Spatial autocorrelation analysis shows that international returnees, who usually had more privileged family backgrounds, clustered in China's highly developed core cities of the Bohai Economic Rim and Yangtze River Delta regions, such as Beijing and Shanghai, while domestic graduates tended to work and live in less affluent medium-sized cities around these regions. Women international graduates were more mobile than their men counterparts. Our results provide new evidence that draws attention to migration's role in graduate career development opportunities and highlights inherent economic discrimination within China, which is perpetuated by the national residency permit system-Hukou. The case of Chinese graduates shows that the mobility patterns of international and domestic graduates are influenced by and contribute to growing regional inequalities for career development in China.
... Some scholars point out that differences in discrimination may occur between Han majority-based and minority-based enterprises. For example, studies by Hannum and Xie (1998) and Howell (2011) show that ethnic minorities are in an economically disadvantaged position due to the development of the labor market and social stratification. Many studies support this viewpoint, underlining that ethnic minorities experience economic discrimination (Zang, 2008;Howell and Fan, 2011;Howell, 2016Howell, , 2017. ...
Many prior studies on minority entrepreneurship have found that some consumers display a strong bias against products from minority ventures. Not surprisingly, discrimination against products sold by minority-owned businesses increases the failure rate for such ventures. This paper seeks to verify the extent of consumer discrimination for minority products, and investigates whether it varies among different products. Building on insights from the theory of consumer discrimination, we conducted a comparative behavior experiment on 155 subjects for the expected pricing of two new products (common products and products with ethnic characteristics). Consistent with prior literature, we found that potential consumers held a bias against common products from minority ventures and offered a lower price. However, the theory of consumer discrimination could not be applied to the products with ethnic characteristics. Instead, potential consumers viewed ethnic characteristics products from minority ventures as being high quality and offered higher prices. This finding complements the theory of consumer discrimination and provides useful knowledge for minority entrepreneurs: minority entrepreneurs can employ price discrimination to strengthen the ethnic brand’s impression by integrating ethnic cultural features into new products.
... Due to the above fact, and in order to ensure employment stability, employers would be forced to raise earnings to attract employees, but this would cause an increase in production costs. Some researchers attribute the existence of labour market segmentation to employers and their endeavours to "minimise costs and maximise performance" (Gordon, 1995;Peck, 1996) There is a noticeable relation between employee migration processes and the reinforcement of the level of the labour market segmentations (Howell, 2011). This is confirmed by research conducted, among others, in Finland, where in response to the economic crisis of 2008-2009, foreigners were employed due to their lower associated costs (Lillie, 2012: 162) The alternative would be to import a foreign labour force which would be eager to take up employment for the remuneration offered (Juska & Woolfson, 2015). ...
... Classifying a respondent into a proper segment can pose many problems. Hence, the research featured the application of statistical analyses based on using hierarchical grouping which allocates occupations in the correct segment with a consideration of the wages or professional work (Howell, 2011). This method, however, is not without its flaws. ...
The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the employment costs and advantages of employing
a foreign labour force. The analysis was made based on the dual labour market theory, whereas
employers were divided into employers of foreigners in occupations from the primary and secondary labour market.
The analysis was based on 263 semi-structured interviews with employers from the Opolskie
Voivodeship (Poland). The respondents were contacted in several ways. Firstly, the CAWI (Computer-Assisted Web Interview) and then PAPI (Paper & Pen Personal Interview) methods were used.
The study showed that there is a significant statistical relationship between the labour market segment in which an employer hires a foreign employee, and the advantages gained by the employer.
On the other hand, the study demonstrated no statistical relations between the labour market segment and the barriers for employing foreigners and their evaluation made by employers.
... On the one hand, since the late 1970s, the creation of new labor markets and social stratification are generally viewed as placing ethnic minorities at an economic disadvantage relative to their Han counterparts (Hannum and Xie 1998;Howell 2011). Numerous studies support this view showing that minorities are at a heightened risk of experiencing economic discrimination, as well as wage insecurity, poverty, and stratification in the labor market (Howell and Fan 2011;Howell 2017). ...
Access to external financing is a major obstacle for starting a new business across various country contexts. Ethnic minorities, in particular, tend to face more extreme financial constraints, although the linkages between ethnicity, finance, and entrepreneurship have never been previously studied in China. Relying on a new proprietary dataset, this paper compares ethnic-based differences in external financing from both formal and informal sources used to start a new micro-enterprise or a small-and-medium-sized enterprise (SME) and the implications on post-entry business performance in China. The main results show that Han households tend to rely more on initial formal financing, but not initial informal financing, to start a new business. Furthermore, Han-operated businesses tend to perform better than their minority-operated counterparts, although this performance gap disappears given similar access to initial external financing.
... The share of the differences in earnings among gender-ethnicity groups can be attributed to differences in the earnings of the labour market positions into which they have been sorted (see, among others, Beck et al., 1980;Tomaskovic-Devey, 1993;Altonji and Blank, 1999;Hiebert, 1999;Hudson, 2007). The underlying mechanism is that minorities and women occupy jobs that typically have lower levels of earnings than jobs occupied by white men, and are often unable to achieve inter-sectoral mobility (Kaufman, 2010;Howell, 2011). ...
Caught at the crossroads? An intersectional approach to gender and ethnicity pay gaps takes an ‘intersectional’ approach to pay gaps by looking at ethnicity and gender together, rather than in isolation. The report shows that ‘pay penalties’ for ethnic minority groups are significant, with Black men and Black women earning the least on average relative to White men. The report includes recommendations for employers to consider when looking at gender and ethnicity pay gaps and when developing action plans.
... Moreover, neither of the aforementioned studies consider whether credit constraints are heterogeneous across ethnic groups. Ethnicity is an important conditioning factor as recent research shows that ethnic minorities tend to be less mobile than their Han counterparts, even after controlling for differences in human capital (Gustafsson and Yang, 2015;Howell et al., 2017;Howell and Fan, 2011;Howell, 2011). As shown in the literature Howell (2013Howell ( , 2017b, the differences in mobility rates across ethnic groups enable Han to capture a higher proportion of the remittances that get sent back to the rural origins, leading to an important source of rural inequality between Han and ethnic minority households in those areas. ...
... Relatively little is known about the income and employment outcomes of ethnic minorities living in Chinese cities, however, since most of the existing studies are limited to smallscale case studies or aggregated statistics. Nevertheless, the evidence from these studies point to significant ethnic-based disparities across a number of labor market dimensions, including the job search process (Maurer-Fazio et al., 2010), occupational attainment (Hannum and Xie, 1998;Howell, 2011Howell, , 2013, access to financial capital (Howell, 2016a), and wage earnings (Ding et al., 2013;Démurger, 2017). ...
... First, coinciding with the exponential increase in the number of Chinese migrants over time, ethnic-based income inequality is also thought to be on the rise (Gustafsson & Shi, 2003), thus suggesting a positive correlation between the two. Relatedly, along with other factors, ethnic inequality is considered to be a major driver of ethnic unrest in some of China's ethnic minority regions (Howell, 2011). Therefore, how migration influences the distribution of income between Han and minority households has important implications for promoting social cohesion within China's ethnic minority regions. ...
... Howell, Gustaffson, and and Ding (2016), for instance, rely on the CHES data and find that most ethnic minorities tend to be less likely to migrate, and migrate for shorter time periods, compared to the Han majority. Moreover, ethnic minorities have been found to face labor market discrimination in the urban destination areas even after controlling for differences in human capital (Hannum & Xie, 1998;Howell, 2011). The lower mobility rates and lower potential earnings in the destination may constrain ethnic minorities' remittances, which in turn, would increase ethnic-based inequality By contrast, some evidence suggests that migration may reduce ethnic-based inequality. ...
Migration is often viewed as the best option for poor rural households to exit out of poverty, although the distributional effects of migrants’ remittances tend to be ambiguous in the literature. Given that increasing income inequality is a major concern and policy issue, this paper examines the impacts of migration and migrants’ remittances on income inequality in China’s rural minority areas using recent proprietary household data. Treating migrants’ remittances as a potential substitute for income, the results reveal that migration significantly boosts income for all ethnic groups, although the returns to ethnic minority households tend to be less than for Han households. Decomposition analyses further reveal that migration increases inequality between ethnic groups despite reducing spatial inequality. These countervailing effects imply that the continual transfer of rural–urban migrants will likely lead to spatial convergence despite reinforcing ethnic inequalities in rural minority areas. Importantly, the percentage contribution of ethnic inequality to total inequality is larger than that of spatial inequality across sampled rural locations, thus highlighting the fact that the ethnic dimension is an important, yet often overlooked component of inequality in China.
