Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

• The title only partly reflects the research, as the main idea in the paper is perception of migrant social inclusion but the title is in this too broad.
• Abstract should include: (1) Background: Place the question addressed in a broad context and highlight the purpose of the study; (2) Methods: Describe briefly the main methods or treatments applied; (3) Results: Summarize the article's main findings; and (4) Conclusions: Indicate the main conclusions or interpretations. 
• In the Introduction authors present very broad information about social inclusion but it does not adequately address the relevance of the study, nor it provides sufficient background information about social inclusion and it's relationship with spatial  differentiation. I would suggest authors not only report the previous research but emphasize what done and what's lacking in the scientific literature which could support the relevance of the research. 
• Authors provide information from year 2019, what do you think do the pandemic years would change the perception of social inclusion? is there a possibility to use newer data for the research?
• Authors indicate that 3,732 questionnaires 111 were valid but what is the general sample do not specify? Is it enough to have 3,732 questionnaires to validate research results? But in Section 3 authors present the information about 9,607 respondents, so it is not clear what is sample research, what is the general sample and etc.
• The literature review is missing analysis of the relevant references because authors only state the ideas from previous research in the introduction. 
• The paper doesn't have a presentation of methods. The procedure of rating is not explained in the paper, as well as variables included in the regression.
•  The results could be supported with deeper interpretation and comparison with previous research results.
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Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

With globalization and more economic and trade cooperation between China and other countries, China's big cities have begun to see more and more immigrants. A megacity's ability to retain people largely depends on its degree of social inclusion, and failure to properly manage the relationship between urban residents and migrants can lead to brain drain and outbreaks of social instability.Guangzhou has a large population of migrant workers from other provinces in China; Meanwhile, the influx of tens of thousands of Africans engaged in trade and business in Guangzhou in recent years has brought challenges to the stability of Guangzhou's social inclusive environment.

This study adopts the quota sampling and online questionnaire survey, based on nearly ten thousand people took part in the social investigation in Guangzhou in 2019, through multiple regression analysis discusses the Guangzhou residents' perception of social inclusion, and the social inclusion perception and the household registration status, working relationship between industry and residential location differences are discussed in this paper; Some suggestions on how to improve the social inclusiveness of urban residents and build inclusive cities are put forward, which will further promote the more inclusive development of cities.

However, in order for the manuscript to finally be published, some modifications were necessary:

1. Can the linear model be used to calculate the social inclusion index accurately? Is there any other method to choose? Please also explain how the weights are calculated.

2. What is the significance of studying the social inclusion of immigrants in Guangzhou for other similar cities? Explain its typicality and representativeness.

3. Pay attention to the structure of the article. For example, it is recommended that the description of the underlying mechanism (3.2.3) be placed in the Discussion section rather than the Results section. Descriptions of demographic characteristics (3.1) and the formula for calculating the social inclusion index (3.2.1) should be placed in the Materials and Methods section.

4. Is there any basis for the selection of the four dimensions when calculating the social inclusion index? Whether the selection of indicators is supported by literature, it is suggested to explain the scientific rationality of the selection of indicators.

5. Urban residents in Guangzhou can be categorized as native residents with local household registration status, residents with non-local household registration. Different residents have different views on the influx of foreigners into Guangzhou, please indicate whether the sample proportion is appropriate and representative in the data description.

6. For the endogeneity of sample selection, if the bias caused by individual heterogeneity cannot be eliminated, the results are often biased;It is suggested to survey the data of the sample index and confirm whether it produces collinearity problem.

7. Pay attention to the drawing specification, the corresponding units need to be added to the chart. The corresponding units such as percentages are missing in Figures 1, 2, and 3.

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

Social Inclusion of Urban Residents in Guangzhou City and the Spatial Differentiation 

 Comments to the author: Abstract- suitable but need to define the data analysis- how 1000 questionnaires were analyzed and what type of analysis was used should be explained in the abstract. Materials and Methods- need to explain how the questionnaire collection is made and need to explain how it is analyzed  Results-wall discussed Discussion and Conclusions- well discussed

Thank You

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Reviewer 4 Report

Referee report on "Social inclusion of urban residents in Guangzhou city and the spatial differentiation"

 

I like the topic quite a bit and I think that the paper is interesting and informative, albeit I had to struggle through some exposition. My comments are below.

 1. The introduction does a good job to survey the literature and introduce the reader into the topic, but it should also stress what is the value added by this paper. After the last paragraph where you introduce your specific theme, please provide 1 or 2 paragraphs to stress your particular findings and the intuition behind them. Do not force the reader wait until pages 9 – 11 to fully understand what the particular contribution of this paper is.

2. Before going to the detail in Materials and Methodology, first introduce Guangzhou. Write that with its population of ... million people, Guangzhou is the nth largest city in China in terms of population, kth largest in China in terms of GDP etc… Absolute majority of people outside China never heard about Chinese cities except Beijing and most people in the world know nothing about Beijing too. Also please let us know is African inflow the unique phenomenon of Guangzhou or are there any other Megacities in China that have experienced a similar inflow? Also provide a brief description of African in-migration into Guangzhou: when it started? What is the size of the inflow? What is the percentage of Africans in the general population? Currently you present it as “impressive migration” (p.2), but it’s absolutely insufficient.

3. You mention that the results of the surveys are obtained in two ways: standard and online. Could you let us know were there any difference between the answers to online questionnaires and the answers given by more standard participants?

3a. You use the data from the year 2019, which is the COVID year. Were the answers collected before or after the outbreak of the pandemics?

4. In the first paragraph of the Demographic Characteristics you present the categorization of the population by the length of their life in Guangzhou, but until the 3 last pages of the paper you leave the reader ignorant that people who lived in G. for more than 10 years are most likely those who were born in Guangzhou. This information is very important, as it is natural to suppose that those who were born in their place of the residence will care for their local identity more than people who just arrived one or five years ago. Please explain it already here.

5. This comment is somewhat more substantial. In the paper, domestic migrants are grouped as migrants from “other provinces”. Do your data allow for separation provinces to more close (culturally, economically etc…) and less close? We know that Guangzhou is relatively advanced. Therefore, feelings of its residence toward newcomers from more or less similarly advanced places would be different relative to newcomers from more backward places.

5a. Moreover, later on in the text you refer to domestic migrants as rural migrant workers. To my knowledge, internal migration in China is not fully homogeneous. Along with rural migrant workers, who, of course, are in majority, there also exists some migration of relatively highly educated people from small- and medium-size urban localities, some of which are even shrinking, to megacities, and Guangzhou is one of such destinations. Please be precise and acknowledge that Most of domestic migrants are rural migrant workers.

6. On page 4 you start separating people by districts. This is right, but if you separate people by districts provide any economic characteristics of these regions. At least, provide average salaries in the districts, which you can take from any official governmental statistics.

6a. Also might it be that some districts are predominantly industrial, while the others are predominantly residential?

7. Where are your African migrants concentrated? You write that they “mostly gather in the urban villages of GC”. Where exactly these urban villages located?

8. In Table 4, when you speak about Chinese residents with non-local registration, you correctly separate attitudes toward people from other provinces from those toward people from other countries. Why don’t you do it in Table 3, when you speak about residents with local household registration?

9. When you explain your findings in sections 3.2.3 and 3.3, strengthen the intuitions and mechanism more.

10. I do not understand the meaning of your claim in lines 292/3: “unlike immigrants from Western countries, who tend to be engaged primarily in low-end manufacturing and services …”. How many Western immigrants are engaged in low-end industries in China? Even in Western countries there are not many such people. Or maybe you mean immigrants IN Western countries?

11. Conclusions:

11a. Maybe I miss something, but it seems to me that your claim (1) (lines 372 – 373) contradicts the results in Table (4).

11b. I also think that Claim (2) is too strong and is not enough supported by the results provided in the paper.

12. When you refer to the resource dilution hypothesis and mention the possible negative effects from migration to the local population (lines 57-60), after this sentence I would suggest providing a reference to Nannestand (2007), who, in his survey of the literature on immigration and welfare state, summarizes the evidence as concluding that immigration was disadvantageous for the indigenous population and beneficial for immigrants and Azarnert (2010), who shows how the influences of unskilled immigration, differential fertility between immigrants and the local indigenous population, and incentives for investment in human capital combine to predict the decline of the West.

12a. Later on, when you refer to human and social capital in the sentence in lines 66 – 68, you could consider adding a reference to Azarnert (2014), where the consequences of integration in public education are analyzed, to your references 15 and 16 in the brackets.

12b. Finally, when you refer to the socioeconomic status as a predictor of the positive or negative attitudes toward immigrants, you can add a reference to a classical study of Mayda (2006) to your reference 41 in the brackets.

 

References

Nannestad, P. (2007) Immigration and welfare states: A survey of 15 years of research. European Journal of Political Economy 23, 512–532.

Azarnert, L.V. (2010) Immigration, fertility, and human capital: A model of economic decline of the West. European Journal of Political Economy 26, 431–440.

Azarnert, L.V. (2014) Integrated public education, fertility and human capital. Education Economics 22, 166–180

Mayda, A.M. (2006) Who is against migration? A cross country investigation of individual attitudes toward immigrants. Review of Economics and Statistics 88, 510–530.

Author Response

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Reviewer 5 Report

The existing research on social inclusion mainly focuses on exploring the influencing factors related to the attitudes of local residents toward migrants in migrant destinations

The paper, by developing the Guangzhou case study, adopts an empirical approach to explore the social inclusion of its urban residents. It spatializes the differences held by different groups of residents toward the non-local population in terms of social inclusion. The study aims to discover factors that affect social inclusion and the reasons behind its spatial differentiation, with a specific focus on policies to retain more talents for local development.

Although the methodology is not original and innovative, the indicators have been adequately selected and the results well described. It also provides useful suggestions and proposes several measures for increasing social inclusion of urban residents and the development of an inclusive city.

As the results are related to the specific geo-political environment, a reference to other geographical context could be beneficial. I suggest, among others:

 Martiniello, M., & Rea, A. (2014). The concept of migratory careers: Elements for a new theoretical perspective of contemporary human mobility. Current Sociology, 62(7), 1079-1096. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011392114553386

 Esposito De Vita, G., & Oppido, S. (2016). Inclusive cities for intercultural communities. European experiences. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 223, 134-140. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2016.05.333

Bolt, G., Burgers, J. & van Kempen, R. On the social significance of spatial location; Spatial segregation and social inclusion. Neth J of Housing and the Built Environment 13, 83–95 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02496935

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for all the improvements.

I still think that Introduction is too broad and that you could move some material to separate literature review.

Also I didn't find the information about general sample and if it is enough 9,607 valid questionaries

 

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Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have made detailed modifications to the manuscript according to the comments and suggestions, and it is recommended to accept for publication.

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