Economic restructuring and the dramatic expansion of higher education have generated large migration flows of skilled employees to Chinese cities. The residential mobility of skilled migrants has a large impact on the operation of housing and labour markets and the (re)production of social inequities. In this paper we examine the effects of life-course trajectories and institutional factors on the residential mobility of skilled migrants, in comparison with local skilled workers in Nanjing, using a retrospective survey conducted in 2012. Results show that skilled migrants have a higher level of residential mobility than their local counterparts, and that this difference arises from the locals' early entry into homeownership. Yet, migrants and locals also share similarities: market factors that are closely related to household, labour, and housing careers are decisive in explaining the residential mobility of skilled workers, indicating that life-course theories are also applicable in the Chinese context. The impacts of traditional institutional factors, such as hukou, employer type, and Chinese Communist Party membership, are of a much smaller magnitude, indicating that markets have become dominant institutions in China.

Human capital has been acknowledged as a key driver for innovation, thereby promoting regional economic development in the knowledge era. University graduates from China’s “first-class” universities—the top 42 universities, included in the “double first-class” initiative, are considered highly educated human capital. Their migration patterns will exert profound impacts on regional development in China, however, little is known about the migration of these elite university graduates and its underlying driving forces. Using data from the 2018 Graduate Employment Reports, this study reveals that the uneven distribution of “first-class” universities and regional differentials largely shaped the migration of graduates from the university to work. Graduates were found aggregating in eastern first-tier cities, even though appealing talent-orientated policies aimed at attracting human capital had been launched in recent years by second-tier cities. Employing negative binomial models, this study investigates how the characteristics of the city of university and destinations affect the intensity of flows of graduates between them. The results showed that both jobs and urban amenities in the university city and destination city exert impacts on the inflow volume of graduates; whereas talent attraction policies introduced by many second-tier cities are found not to exert positive effects on attracting “first-class” university graduates presently. The trend of human capital migration worth a follow-up investigation, particularly given ongoing policy dynamics, and would shed light on the regional development disparities in China.

Housing affordability has become a critical challenge worldwide, consequently constraining young generation from entering the housing market. Despite growing attention to housing inequality in China, little research has been undertaken to reveal the extent to which a family of origin contributes to housing inequality among young adults. Family resources could support the young generation to achieve homeownership not only directly through intergenerational transfers of wealth, but also indirectly through intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic characteristics. Using the 2013 Fudan Yangtze River Delta Social Transformation Survey, this study constructs a structural equation model to examine the direct and indirect influence of parents’ resources on the young generation’s housing outcomes. The results show that the direct influence of parents’ homeownership is prominent, whereas the impact of transmitted socioeconomic status is limited. Housing advantages of parents, derived from their superior institutional status during China’s housing reforms, are being transmitted to their offspring, particularly to sons.

The last two decades have witnessed a substantial growth of the owner-occupied housing sector in urban China, where most people tend to follow a conventional life course in terms of ascending the housing ladder towards homeownership. Yet, with skyrocketing housing prices in the real estate market, fragmentation in housing opportunities has become more important in reshaping the structure of social inequalities. This paper investigates the disparities in housing careers between skilled migrants and their local counterparts in Nanjing, focusing on temporal and spatial aspects. Specifically, this paper examines how skilled migrants’ housing tenure and location change over time, to what extent these changes differ from those of skilled locals, and what factors contribute to the disparities between migrants and locals. The results verify that there are indeed disparities in housing careers between migrants and locals, and the foremost difference lies in the tenure, especially the tenure of the first residence. Spatially, migrants exhibit an outward-bound pattern, often associated with the transition from renting to owning. These disparities in housing careers could be primarily attributed not only to the gap of the intergenerational transfer of wealth between migrants and locals, which can be traced back to regional disparities in economic development, but also to the self-selection of migration. While facing skyrocketing housing prices, the timing of making a foray into the housing market is pivotal. This study also revealed the diminishing marginal utility of education that is found in terms of establishing a superior housing career.