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Rural-to-Urban Migration and Juvenile Delinquency in Urban China: a Social Control Perspective

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Abstract

In the past decade, the number of rural-to-urban migrant adolescents in urban China has soared. Official criminal justice statistics point to their higher level of deviance compared to urban adolescents. This study examines whether rural migrant children are more delinquent than their urban peers in the school sample. It provides explanations for the gap by linking Hirschi’s social bond theory with the literature on migration in China. Moreover, it formally tests which elements of social bonds mediate the relationship between migrant status and delinquency. Based on a large-scale survey in Guangzhou involving 470 rural migrants and 838 urban junior high school students, our analysis shows that migrant adolescents engage in slightly more delinquent behavior and have weaker social bonds than local adolescents. Attachment to parents and school, commitment to education, and belief in law fully mediate the positive relationship between migration and delinquency. Such findings indicate that within China’s dual urban–rural structure, rural-to-urban migration can increase these adolescents’ exposure to risk factors that undermine their social bonds to conventional society and thus lead to higher levels of delinquency.

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Notes

  1. As our respondents are junior middle school students, they may not have enough knowledge to provide objective information about their families’ SES and thus we decide to use this subjective measure. Future research could consider a more sophisticated research design if there is more resource, such as distributing matching questionnaires to the students’ parents.

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Acknowledgments

The data used in this study were collected by Professor Yuet-Wah CHEUNG (PI), Professor Hua ZHONG, and Professor Nicole Wai-Ting CHEUNG of the Department of Sociology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Their research project is entitled “Stuck in the City: Migration and Delinquency among Migrant Adolescents in Guangzhou”.

Funding

This data used in the study comes from a research project that was funded by the South China Program, Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, State University of New York at Albany, 1400 Washington Ave, Albany, NY, 12222, USA

    Yinzhi Shen

  2. Department of Sociology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, NT, Hong Kong SAR

    Hua Zhong

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  1. Yinzhi Shen
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  2. Hua Zhong
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Correspondence to Yinzhi Shen.

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Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Appendices

Appendix 1

(1) Factor pattern for attachment to parents

Indicators

Factor loadings

How is your relationship with your parents?

.639

Do your parents support and encourage you?

.757

Do you talk to your parents when you are unhappy?

.684

Do your parents show interest in your school life?

.542

Do you engage in leisure activities with your parents?

.621

(2) Factor pattern for attachment to school

Indicators

Factor loadings

How many teachers in this school are pleasant to you?

.541

Do you think the teachers in your school care about students?

.588

Do you think the teachers in your school treat students fairly?

.595

Do you like the campus environment?

.768

Do you like the teaching facilities?

.813

Do you like the teaching quality?

.862

Do you like the learning atmosphere?

.768

Appendix 2

Table 5 Correlation matrix of all the variables in the regression models (The key variables are significantly correlated in the expected directions. Variance inflation factor analysis shows that the independent variables do not constitute high multicollinearity.)
Full size table

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Shen, Y., Zhong, H. Rural-to-Urban Migration and Juvenile Delinquency in Urban China: a Social Control Perspective. Asian J Criminol 13, 207–229 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11417-018-9267-z

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