Home in the big city: does place of origin affect homeownership among the post-80s generation in Shanghai

Existing literature has uncovered housing divergence between migrants and locals in urban China, but has neglected the increasing diversity of migrants’ places of origin and its association with their housing opportunities. Based on a survey on the post-80s generation in Shanghai, this paper investigates the impact of residents’ place of origin on their housing outcomes. The results suggest that access to homeownership is a function of the position of an individual’s place of origin in the urban hierarchy. Shanghai locals are the most advantaged, followed by migrants from other centrally administered municipalities, provincial capitals and other cities at a higher position in the urban hierarchy. Migrants from market towns and rural areas, especially in underdeveloped regions, have inferior housing tenures and are shunned from homeownership. It implies that regional inequality is not fixed geographically but accompanies people’s mobility. Similar to the concept of social origin, this paper elaborates on geographical origin and its role in the reproduction of social inequality.