Research on the Impact of Labor Migration on the Urban‐Rural Integration of Basic Education in China

ABSTRACT

Rapid urbanization and large‐scale rural‐to‐urban labor migration in China have reshaped the development landscape of urban‐rural basic education. This paper aims to systematically synthesize and review the literature on the impact of labor migration on urban‐rural basic education integration. The review first analyzes the impact mechanisms of migration on the supply and demand of education, the efficiency and equity of resource allocation in urban and rural areas from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Subsequently, it clarifies that labor migration, by disrupting the supply and demand of education, causing spatial misallocation of resources, and creating friction with the static household registration system, exerts multi‐dimensional and complex inhibitory effects on the integration of urban and rural education. Finally, it reveals that the ultimate impact shows significant non‐linear, conditional, and heterogeneous features, conditional on key moderators such as institutional responses, family capital, and regional conditions. The realization of future integration lies in building an education finance and planning mechanism that can dynamically respond to population distribution, empowering quality integration through digital technology, promoting the characteristic development of rural small‐scale schools, and dismantling institutional barriers such as household registration and school progression constraints, thereby promoting the high‐quality and systematic integration of urban‐rural basic education.