Parental Migration and Juvenile Delinquency: The Role of Social Support from Different Resources

Background and Purpose: Theories in criminology have identified the parental influence as a primary factor contributing to juvenile antisocial behavior (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990; Patterson, Reid, & Dishion, 1992). There are 61 million left-behind children (LBC) in China suffering from prolonged separation from their migrant parents. Many studies have found negative impacts of parental migration on LBC’ psychosocial development, however how parental migration may impact LBC’s delinquency still remains unclear.

This study examined the correlation between parental migration and juvenile delinquency, and investigated whether such correlation can be mediated by family support, teacher support and peer support.

Methods: A cross-sectional survey was used to collect the data. A provincial-level representative sample of secondary school students in Western China was obtained through random sampling by a multistage-stratified and clustering method. Participants were asked to answer their parental migration status: living with both parents (Non-LBC); father or mother migrant (LBC-O); both parents migrant (LBC-B). The Delinquency Scale was used to measure theft and violent delinquency. The Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support was used to assess social support from families, teachers, and peers.

Differences in delinquency and social support among Non-LBC, LBC-O and LBC-B were compared using ANOVA. The mediation effect of social support was tested by multivariate regression analyses after controlling respondent’s age and gender.

Results: 1950 respondents (Non-LBC=849, 43.54%; LBC-O=466, 23.90%; LBC-B=625, 32.56%) completed the survey (mean age=13.66; SD=1.18) with a gender ratio of 1.004. Among LBC, the percentage of respondents under each caregiving arrangement was 31.37% (be taken care of by one parent, N=336), 64.05% (be taken care of by grandparents or other relatives, N=686) and 4.58% (live alone with no carer, N=49).

All three groups did not show significant differences in theft delinquency, however LBC-O and LBC-B showed significant higher scores on violent delinquency (LBC-O: M=0.707, SD=1.204; LBC-B:M=0.815, SD=1.204) than Non-LBC (M=0.614, SD=0.975, p<.01). As for social support from different resources, LBC-B did not differ from Non-LBC and LBC-O in the scores of teacher support and peer support but had significant lower scores on family support (M=20.321, SD=5.704, p<.001) than the other two groups.

For all respondents, family support, teacher support and peer support were all significantly associated with violent delinquency (β=-0.033, p<.001; β=-0.02, p<.001; β=-0.014, p=.001), but only family support mediated the association between parental migration and violent delinquency.

Conclusion and Implications: Adolescents left behind by both parents have a potential high risk of receiving poor family support and getting involved in violent delinquency, thus are in need of proper interventions. Given the mediating role of family support, social workers can promote family-based services to reduce the propensity of committing violent delinquency for adolescents with migrant parents.