Housing Talents: Affordable Rental Housing (ARH) Access for Highly Skilled Migrants: A Case Study of Shanghai, China

In the face of intensifying inter-city competition and a shift towards a knowledge- and information-based economy, China has experienced a growing demand for highly skilled migrant labour. Despite their advantageous position in the labour market, many migrants face significant challenges in securing urban housing. To address these challenges, the Chinese central government launched the Affordable Rental Housing (ARH) initiative in 2021, targeting cities with net population inflows. Shanghai, as one of the pioneering metropolises, has extended public housing eligibility to migrants from other Chinese regions, restructuring its urban housing governance in the process. This study examines Shanghai’s ARH initiative, focusing on the policy’s formulation and implementation involving multiple stakeholders in urban housing provision. Through qualitative methods including document analysis, interviews, and participant observations, this research aims to: 1) explore the policy design and implementation of multi-actor public housing allocation in urban China, 2) identify key challenges and strategies in public housing policy execution across different contexts, and 3) understand the interactions among stakeholders and individual users that shape housing policy outcomes. An institutional analytical framework, complemented by social constructionism and a housing pathways approach, guides this investigation into multi-actor housing delivery in China, examining both socially constructed policy design and practical implementation. The findings reveal that both formal and informal rules significantly influence stakeholder and individual interactions during the ARH policy design and implementation phases. National-level policymakers, viewing migrants as vital human capital, have created formal rules that favour economically productive demographics, leveraging social policy to enhance labour market productivity and efficiency. Local administrators (e.g. district government officials and frontline service staff), exercising considerable discretion within China’s bureaucratic framework, adapt these formal rules during execution to align with local development goals. These local actors thus play a key role in mediating public welfare distribution at the implementation frontline. They employ informal incentive mechanisms to shape stakeholder engagement in service delivery, encouraging key stakeholders with multiple incentives while imposing barriers on others. The study concludes that individual migrants’ experiences with ARH applications are largely determined by institutional barriers set by government and employers, prioritising key employers and highly productive employees to advance local economic interests. Thus, the primary objective of China’s housing provision strategy is to stimulate local economic growth, driven by market actors’ assessment of potential payoffs and local governments’ development-specific strategies. This research contributes to the literature on urban housing in China by providing rich empirical evidence and highlighting local development objectives as drivers of policy interaction processes through an institutional lens.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Lu, Qianyu

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Burgess, Gemma

• Affordable Rental Housing
• Skilled Migrants
• Institutional Analysis and Development
• Social Construction
• Theorising Public Housing

Licence

• https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/ec5f98da-cdde-416d-bb80-aa72262df38d/download
• http://purl.org/NET/rdflicense/allrightsreserved

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.122802

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/391811