Unsustainable Urban Development Based on Temporary Workers: A Study on the Changes of Immigration in Macau between 1992 and 2019

Abstract

Macau’s urban development model has many unique characteristics, including expansion of the city through sea reclamation, increasing population mainly through immigration, and economic development driven by the gaming industry. Based on data from the Macau Statistics and Census Service, this study uses the Error Correction representation of the Autoregressive Distributed Lag model (ARDL-ECM) to analyze the impact of urban development on the trends of immigration and labor migration in Macau between 1992 and 2019. Results show that both land area and wage level have positive effects on the number of migrant workers and negative effects on the number of immigrants, indicating that Macau is over-dependent on short-term migrant workers. Macau’s land and human resources are tilted towards the gaming industry, resulting in a decreasing living environment and resident carrying capacity as the city develops. Therefore, this paper suggests that Macau should reduce the cost of city expansion and improve economic diversity through strengthening cooperation with neighboring mainland cities, hence sparing resources to absorb non-local talent and ensuring sustainable urban development.