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Abstract

Hukou registration is an instrument to control nonplanned population and capital movements, which the Chinese Communist Party has been exploiting extensively since the 1950s. It requires that each Chinese citizen be classified as either an agricultural or nonagricultural hukou inheritor and be distinguished by their location with respect to an administrative unit. Hukou distribution used to be entirely determined by birth, but nowadays, Chinese citizens can self-select their hukou status based on their ability that causes selection bias in conventional wage decomposition by hukou types. To avoid this bias, I estimated hukou-based earning discrimination by matching Chinese individuals based on a rich set of individual-, family-, and society-level characteristics. By deploying a recent nationally representative dataset, this paper finds that significant earning discriminations exist against agricultural hukou people. I further investigated the impact of hukou adoption within work ownership, work and employer types, and labor contract conditions. I argue that earning difference by hukou is not due to rural–urban segregations; rather, it is systematic and institutionally enforced. This is because, contrary to self-employment and no labor contract conditions, discrimination exists only when others employ them and where a labor contract condition is enforced. Moreover, they face discrimination only when they work for the Chinese government, not when they work for private firms, and they face higher discrimination in nonagriculture-related professions compared to agriculture-related professions.

The development of an EU identity should be supported by a legal framework to be able to justify its legitimation. Following the work of Ian Manners on normative power, this paper discusses the links between key aspects of EU values such as solidarity and human rights in a context where supporters of nation-states and Westphalian views of states have recently dominated European politics. This has had a a direct impact (or lack of) on the promotion of multiculturalism. This paper takes Greece as an example of how the EU's approach towards this country could have been a display of solidarity and promotion of human rights but it missed the opportunity. One of the reasons for favouring a more utilitarian approach could be linked to the lack of sense and belonging to the EU society as a consequence of the barriers created by strong feelings of nationalism attached to European states and nations together with a lack of promotion of multiculturalism. It is argued that a more multicultural society could benefit from the creation of an EU identity and consequently, the creation of an EU society, EU policies, and potentially, the avoidance of future European crisis such as the one created with Brexit.Received: 02 July 2018 Accepted: 16 July 2018 Published online: 27 February 2019