WATERING THE NEIGHBOUR'S GARDEN: THE GROWING - CICRED

SOCIAL NETWORKS AND SON PREFERENCE AMONG RURAL-URBAN MIGRANTS …
Relations between individuals and their network members have
effects on their attitudes (Bott, 1971). Granovetter (1973) divided
social network relations into strong and weak ties based on the number
of contacts, the emotional bond, the degree of intimacy, and
reciprocity. Specifically, strong ties refer to contacts between network
members who are likely to be homogeneous in terms of gender, age,
education, occupation, and income, while weak ties are between
members with heterogeneous identities and can be regarded as an
“information bridge” among network members (Granovetter, 1973).
Chinese rural society is highly respectful of familial and geographical
relations. Bian (1997) classified relations in the social networks of
Chinese rural-urban migrants as follows: strong ties include “blood
relationship” and “geographical relationship”, such as between family
members, kin and countrymen; weak ties are formed by “job
relationship” and “friend relationship”, involving friends, bosses and
fellow workers. Accordingly, in this chapter, those connections in
migrants’ networks between members with high homogeneity of social
characteristics are classified as strong ties, and involve self-employed
workers, workers in the commerce and service industries, industrial
workers, and the unemployed; those with heterogeneous identities,
classified as weak ties, involve managers, owners of private enterprises,
professional or technical personnel, and officers. We confirm that weak
ties tend to make rural-urban migrants’ attitudes and behaviours more
consistent with those of the permanent urban residents, but this
depends on details of the migrant’s history, for example the length of
time they have resided in the urban areas.
2.2. Migration experiences
Migration helps to change individual attitudes and behaviours
(Goldstein et al., 1997). Both attitudes towards childbearing formed
before migration, and adaptation to the host culture and customs in
urban areas after migration, might have effects on son preference
among rural-urban migrants. Hence we ask whether age at first
migration, years of living in urban areas and times back home per year
have impacts on son preference among rural-urban migrants after
migration. First, according to Riley’s age stratification theory, at the
point of initial out-migration, attitudes towards childbearing should
differ greatly among age cohorts, according to family economic
condition, education, life courses, and period of history (Riley, 1971).
For example, young people care little about marriage and childbearing,
and may therefore be less likely to have a preference for sons. By
contrast, older people, especially those who are married, have usually
been influenced for years by the patrilineal family system, and are likely
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