Political trust on the move: Chinese rural-to-urban migrants' trust in local government

About 292 million rural-to-urban migrants live and work in cities in Mainland China, yet little has been known about the political attitudes of this large number of people. This study aims to address this gap by exploring Chinese rural-to-urban migrants' trust in county government of their new urban places of residence. Utilizing data from the China Family Panel Studies in 2014, we employed ordered logistic regression among rural-to-urban migrants and found that migrants' evaluations of government performance and their interactions with local governments (i.e., having conflicts with officials, being unfairly treated by officials, or having unreasonable delay at government institutions) significantly affect their trust levels. Migrants' socioeconomic status (i.e., income, employment status, and occupational prestige scales) and their experiences of facing discrimination by urban dwellers do not appear to affect migrants' trust in local government. Political trust is an important indicator which signals the quality of government relationships with rural-to-urban migrants and therefore merits additional policy attention, complementing the existing policies mainly focusing on migrants' economic and social improvements.