Rural-out migration destinations in a hierarchically multinested local state system in China: A perspective of migration sending areas

Internal migration studies commonly use “push” and “pull” factors to explain reasons for migration. There are indeed dynamic push and pull forces at both ends of migration origins and destinations, which may vary significantly across specific localities. Previous studies mainly focused on pull factors at a few common destinations to examine their selectivity to different migrants while the effects of push and pull forces at the local place of origin on the choice of destinations are rarely investigated. In countries like China, destinations may range from megacities to small towns, which are intertwined with the hierarchically multinested local state system. This paper explores how factors associated with village origin, together with personal attributes and family endowments, sort migrants to destinations aligned with the administrative system. Results from simple logit and multinomial logit analysis suggest that the geographical location, topography, and economic conditions of a village, in addition to personal attributes and family endowments, function as a fundamental mechanism to steer migrants to different destinations.