Characterising social integration between rural migrants and local residents in urban China: An exploratory social network analysis of care workers in Shanghai

Recent decades have witnessed large migration flows from rural to urban China. This chapter explores the potential of Social Network Analysis (SNA) for assessing and understanding social integration in contemporary Chinese cities. We begin by presenting the background and the complex, multi-dimensional and inter-connected factors that typically affect segregation and inequality within urban China. SNA is introduced as a potential analytical approach for characterising and examining the ongoing dynamic social integration process. We discuss some initial findings based upon an exploratory case study in Shanghai on multi-dimensional segregation in the social care sector. We also identify the limitations of SNA as a relatively innovative method for researching social integration and call for a mixed-methods approach toward its application in examining the intricacy and complexity of social integration in contemporary urban China.