Intention and Perceived Control: International Migrants’ Assimilation in China

Using the unique Survey of Foreigner Residents in China from 2018 to 2019, this study examines the assimilation of international migrants in China by considering how migrants’ intention to assimilate and perceptions of local control affect their behavior, which in turn affects their assimilation outcomes. The main behavior upon which we focus on is the formation of a host social network. Regression analyses and formal mediation analyses are performed to explore how intention and perceived control serve as motivators or barriers that facilitate or restrict international migrants’ acculturation and structural assimilation via host social network formation or other behaviors. Our results show that migrants’ intention to assimilate has significant effects on their acculturation and structural assimilation outcomes via the establishment of a host social network and via other behaviors. As a result, it has a strong total impact on migrants’ assimilation outcomes, as tested with a formal Sobel test. Migrants’ perceptions of local control, in contrast, have negative direct effects on both acculturation and structural assimilation, but no significant indirect effects are identified, which suggests that perceived local control may not affect migrants’ formation of a host social network but may influence other behaviors. From the Sobel test, we find no evidence of total effects from the perceptions of local control.