Co‐Ethnic Networks in Ethnic Minority's Migration Destination Choices
2025-09-30
Co‐ethnic networks influence people's migration destination choices, particularly for vulnerable populations and ethnic minorities. While the influence of co‐ethnic networks has been well‐documented in the context of international migration, its impact on internal migrants in multi‐ethnic countries remains underexplored. Moreover, previous research has failed to disentangle the impacts of co‐ethnic networks and native‐place networks on migrants' destination choices in the context of internal labour migration due to data limitations. This study takes advantage of a full sample of 53,733 ethnic‐minority labour migrants from X County in China to examine how co‐ethnic networks impact ethnic minority's migration destination choice, and how these impacts vary with migrants' labour mobility. Our findings reveal two key insights: First, migrants are more likely to choose destinations with a large co‐ethnic network compared to migrants from the same region but with different ethnic backgrounds. Second, migrants with disadvantaged attributes, who typically exhibit lower labour mobility, tend to show a stronger preference for destinations with large co‐ethnic communities. This study quantifies the influence of co‐ethnic networks on internal labour migration destination choices and explores their interactions with migrants' labour mobility.