Social Inclusion In Urban China: Development and Application of the Perceived Social Inclusion Scale (PSIS)

Abstract

Along with the economic growth and urbanization development after the reforms since late 1970s, widening economic inequality, inadequate social welfare provisions as well as weakening social solidarity have increasingly emerged in urban society of China. Social inclusion issue has received mounting discussion from government to academia, and the mass society. Social inclusion discourse evolved from the poverty and social exclusion discourses in western countries, and gradually expanded to international field and developing countries. Being developed within different social contexts, sociological thoughts, as well as research fields, there are divergent definitions around it, with varied focus on economic integration, participation, citizenship rights, social relations, etc. To increase the understanding of social inclusion phenomenon and facilitate the related researches in urban China, three important endeavors were done in this research.
First, social inclusion was clarified to be one kind of individual-level perception, defined as the degree to which people are enabled to have equal opportunities to participate in key life domains and the degree to which they feel integrated into the society in which they live. According to the definition, a survey was conducted among 417 urban residents of Chongqing city. It obtained a Perceived Social Inclusion Scale (PSIS) with 20 items grouping into four subscales, i.e., economic integration, social attachment, service opportunity, and cultural acceptance. The further tests demonstrated it is reliable and with adequate validity. Finding from a survey with 895 valid samples from three cities further supported its factor structure.
Second, with the 895 urban resident samples, based on the paradigms in social inclusion theory, the findings revealed an indigenized view of the effect of socio- economic status on social inclusion in urban China. First, both objective and subjective socio-economic status were robust predictors of social inclusion. Second, the mechanisms of how and why the effects work were investigated. Socio-economic status’ (both objective and subjective) effects on social inclusion were mediated through the volume of social capital, i.e. people with higher socio-economic status tend to possess more social capital, which in turn report higher social inclusion. In addition, the unique Chinese institution- hukou system matters and the effect of socio-economic status on individual social inclusion was contingent on people’s hukou status. For people with urban hukou, higher objective socio-economic status will lead to higher social inclusion, while that is not the case for people with rural (non-urban) hukou. As to the subjective socio-economic status, higher subjective status will lead to higher social inclusion, and the effect is stronger among people with rural hukou than those with urban hukou.
Third, the study revealed that social inclusion has positive impact on the eudaimonic well-being- flourishing, which is argued to be appropriate to the Chinese, and individual social networks play important role in their relationship. A mediation model was constructed showing that both social capital and social support, respectively as the structural and functional components of social networks mediated social inclusion’s impact on flourishing, and the two components in serial played indirect effects in their relationship.
The developed PSIS in the present research provides researchers and practitioners with a useful instrument to measure social inclusion perception in particular experienced by general population within China urban society. These empirical findings add our knowledge about the influential factors of social inclusion and its significance on individual well-being, and specific mechanisms underlying them. To address the widening economic inequality, inadequate social welfare provisions, and weakening social solidarity closely related to the social inclusion issue in the post-reform urban society, public policy makers should not only pay attention to promote equal opportunity and equal access to public services and social provisions, but also should enhance the capability of social management, effectively mitigate contradictions among the social classes, especially building a conducive environment for disadvantaged groups. In addition, government needs to reform the institutional constraints that potentially impede individual social inclusion, including further reforming the current hukou system and the social security systems. Finally, implications in increasing social capital and social support in the social networks with joint efforts from government actions, community, social workers, and the urban residents themselves are presented. Limitations are discussed, and future research directions are suggested.

Date of Award	20 May 2016
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Kwok Hong Raymond CHAN (Supervisor)