ABSTRACT

Intra-cities inequalities also exploded during the last decade as urbanization accelerated.2 Since the 1990s, worsened social inequalities in the cities resulted in the new phenomenon of urban poverty, closely linked to job situations. Although the global economic crisis is presented since the end of 2008 as a major factor generating a rise of unemployment-in particular among the over 20 million rural migrants returning to the countryside because of the diffi culties of export-oriented factories, tensions on the urban job markets are deeply rooted in the last decades of reforms. Public-sector restructuring, rural-urban migrations, and demographic growth are the three most crucial factors shaping the emerging urban labor market.