Abstract:

On 18 November 2017, a major fire broke out in Xihongmen Town, Daxing District, Beijing, where migrants are concentrated, killing 19 people and injuring 8 others. Of the victims, 16 were floating population from Shandong, Henan, and Hebei Provinces. In March 2014, the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and the State Council distributed the National New Urbanization Plan (2014-2020). The new urbanization plan attaches great importance to the realization of "urbanization of people." Clarifying the characteristics and spatial patterns of floating population is an important prerequisite for promoting the urbanization of people and one of the core issues of the new-type urbanization initiative. Based on the survey data of migrant population health monitoring in 2015, this study explored the floating population's age, education level, employment, income, expenditure, and other characteristics, as well as the spatial distribution pattern of the source and destination areas in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration. The results show that the age structure of the surveyed migrant population was dominated by young and middle-aged workforce, showing a low level of education, predominantly agricultural population registration (hukou), and inter-provincial migration. The main reasons for the migration were employment and business activities. The income of the sampled migrants was mainly in the low and medium range, and the Engel's coefficient was higher than the average Engel's coefficient of the resident population. The sectoral distribution of the floating population was diversified, but mainly in the low-end commercial service industry. The proportion of those engaged in the wholesale and retail trade, resident service, repair and other service industries, manufacturing industry, and catering industry accounted for 70.7% of the total. The enrolment rate of health insurance was high, but the penetration of health education was low. In terms of the spatial distribution of inflow and outflow areas, the surveyed floating population mainly came from the provinces with similar geographical locations or large output of labor, such as Hebei, Shandong, Henan, Heilongjiang, and Anhui Provinces, which accounted for 70.75% of the whole surveyed floating population. The Beijing-Tianjin region was the major destination area of migrants, accounting for 37.76% and 29.11% of the total in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration respectively. Therefore, this article proposes to strengthen the social security and vocational training for migrants to improve the ability of migrants to integrate into cities, improve the openness and inclusiveness of cities, and enhance the sense of attainment and happiness of the floating population.

Key words: new urbanization, floating population, characteristics and spatial patterns, inclusiveness, openness, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration