Immigration status and bullying victimization: Associations across national and school contexts

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2019.101075Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Immigrant youth reported more bullying victimization than non-immigrants

  • Differences were more pronounced for first- than second-generation immigrants

  • Victimization was less prevalent at older ages regardless of immigration status

  • Immigration effects on victimization did not vary across 26 receiving countries

  • Risk of victimization for second-generation immigrants varied across schools.

Abstract

This study examined whether the association between immigration and bullying victimization differed across immigrant generation, age and national and school context. Data were used from the 2013–14 Health Behavior in School-Aged Children study among nationally-representative samples of young people in 26 countries/regions. Multilevel logistic regression analyses showed that first- and second-generation immigrants were more likely to report bullying victimization than non-immigrants. However, differences according to immigration status were more pronounced for first- than second-generation immigrants. For both immigrants and non-immigrants, bullying victimization was less prevalent at older ages. Strikingly, all immigration effects were similar across countries, and only differences in bullying victimization between second-generation immigrant and non-immigrant youth varied across schools. This variation was not related to school-level classmate or teacher support. Findings point to the vulnerability of immigrant youth for bullying victimization throughout Europe.

Introduction

Given the high prevalence of bullying victimization throughout Europe (Inchley et al., 2016), and the short- and long-term problems associated with this (e.g., Copeland, Wolke, Angold, & Costello, 2013; Kretschmer, Veenstra, Deković, & Oldehinkel, 2017), research has given considerable attention to identifying individual-level risk factors for bullying victimization. One of these factors is immigration status. Theoretically, it has been proposed that immigrant youth may experience more bullying victimization than their non-immigrant peers because immigrants are easy targets for bullying since they may look, dress and talk differently than non-immigrant youth, they have a relatively low social standing because of prejudices toward their ethnic group (Mendez, Bauman, & Guillory, 2012), and they sometimes have less well-developed support networks (Oppedal, Røysamb, & Sam, 2004). In line with this, several studies found more bullying victimization among immigrant than non-immigrant youth (e.g., Alivernini, Manganelli, Cavicchiolo, & Lucidi, 2019; Borraccino et al., 2018; Strohmeier, Kärnä, & Salmivalli, 2011; Walsh et al., 2016). In contrast, several other studies revealed similar levels of bullying victimization among youth with and without an immigrant background (Fandrem, Strohmeier, & Roland, 2009; Stefanek, Strohmeier, de van Schoot, & Spiel, 2012; Jugert & Titzmann, 2017; Vervoort, Scholte, & Overbeek, 2010).

These inconsistent findings might indicate that the immigration-victimization link depends upon the context in which immigrant youth and their parents grow up. However, as outlined below, it remains an open question as to whether differences in bullying victimization between immigrant and non-immigrant youth depend on the country of residence, and the same accounts for the school context. In addition, the interplay between developmental and immigration processes (Titzmann & Lee, 2018) has not been addressed satisfactorily. In this study, we contribute to the literature by investigating the association between immigration status (distinguishing between immigrants of the first and second generation) and bullying victimization in a large nationally representative cross-national, school-based sample of young people. In doing so, we investigate whether the lower prevalence of bullying victimization at older ages occurs for first- and second-generation immigrants as for non-immigrants. Moreover, we study whether the national and school context of immigrant youth influences the association between immigration status and bullying victimization.

Section snippets

Immigrant generation, age and the immigration – bullying victimization link

On the individual level, both the immigrant generation and the age of the youngster may influence the link between immigration and bullying victimization. For immigrant generation, two contradictory hypotheses can be formulated. First, second-generation immigrants, who are born in the receiving country, are more likely to be socially and culturally integrated and are more proficient in the receiving-country language than first-generation immigrants (e.g. Barban & White, 2011). Consequently,

National and school context and the immigration – bullying victimization link

In general, it has been argued that youth development is best understood by the inclusion of multiple layers of influence, starting from the resources of the individual, through proximal (e.g., the family, school and peers) and more distal influences (e.g., the neighborhood, community and national context and policies) (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2007). For instance, in the Integrative Framework for Studying Immigrant Youth Adaptation (IFSIY) (Motti-Stefanidi, Berry, Chryssochoou, Lackland Sam, &

This study

This study was the first to investigate the association between immigration and bullying victimization by means of a large-scale internationally comparative study conducted in 26 countries/regions. Using this unique dataset, we also explored the importance of the national and school context on the strength of this association. More specifically, we examined: 1) the association between immigration status and bullying victimization, distinguishing between first- and second-generation immigrants;

Participants and procedure

The Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC) study is a WHO collaborative cross-national study conducted every four years in over 40 countries/regions in Europe, Canada and Israel. The HBSC study collects data on the well-being and social environments of 11-, 13-, and 15-year-old boys and girls. A standardized sampling method was used to ensure that all national samples were representative of groups living in the country within the age range (Roberts et al., 2009). Cluster sampling was

Bullying victimization

Following a definition of bullying (Olweus, 1997), young people were asked how many times they had been bullied at school in the past couple of months. The response categories available were: ‘I have not been bullied by another pupil in the past couple of months’ (1), ‘it has happened only once or twice’ (2), ‘2 or 3 times a month’ (3), ‘about once a week’ (4), ‘several times a week’ (5). This is one of the most validated measures on bullying victimization (Vessey, Strout, DiFazio, & Walker,

Descriptive results

An overview of the descriptive statistics for all study variables and their correlations with bullying victimization is provided in Table 2. Results indicated that both first- and second-generation immigrant youth were more likely to report bullying victimization than their non-immigrant peers, and bullying victimization was less frequently reported at older ages, although these correlations were small (r < 0.107, p < .001). No association was found between either the MIPEX or country-level

Discussion

Our study is, to the best of our knowledge, the first to investigate country-level differences in the association between immigration status and bullying victimization in nationally representative samples of young people across 26 countries/regions in Europe. Results showed that both first- and second-generation immigrant youth face higher levels of bullying victimization than their non-immigrant peers. Differences in bullying victimization between immigrants and non-immigrants were more

Declaration of Competing Interest

None.

Acknowledgements

We thank all the adolescents who participated in the HBSC study. The International Coordinators of the HBSC study was Jo Inchley (2013/2014) (University of St Andrews), and the Data Bank Manager was prof. Oddrun Samdal (University of Bergen). For details see www.hbsc.org.

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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