Gender,Victimization,and Adolescent Psychological Health in the Context of Migration

Abstract

Although gender has become a key dimension in migration research, previous scholarship has largely focused on adult rather than child migrants. Even less attention has been paid to the role of gender in migration-related child health. By comparing rural migrant and urban-born adolescents in the largest city in south China, this study assessed gender differences in psychological health and whether such differences were informed by socially induced victimization stressors and stress-moderation mechanisms related to the social relationships that link migrants to their host cities (local ties) and home villages (translocal ties). Victimization was more strongly correlated with suboptimal psychological health in girls versus boys across the migrant and urban-born samples. Local and translocal ties directly increased the psychological health and buffered the deleterious effect of victimization for migrant girls; yet, the roles of these ties were less notable in migrant boys. These results indicate gendered susceptibility to social stress in migrant adolescents.

Keywords

gender health mental health immigration victimization stress

There is growing meta-analytic evidence that links the stressful impact of migration to common mental disorders (depression and anxiety) (Das-Munshi, Leavey, Stansfeld, & Prince, 2012). This health disadvantage is especially evident when the healthy migrant effect, which holds that healthier individuals tend to migrate, diminishes over time in tandem with difficult assimilation (S. Lee, O’Neill, Ihara, & Chae, 2013). This disadvantage also intersects with gender, with migrant women being more vulnerable to health risks (Malmusi, Borrell, & Benach, 2010). It has been widely recognized that migration cannot be understood independently of gender, which shapes the motivations and risks governing the migration movement. Gender also clarifies the reconfiguration of power relations in household, workplace, and health care at the destinations, and cultural changes in the origin communities (Lu & Tao, 2015; Paul, 2015; Pessar & Mahler, 2003). However, most previous work has focused on adult migrants and has produced limited knowledge of the gender issue in child migration. This limitation has been particularly evident in research on migration-related child health (Stevens & Vollebergh, 2008). Studying child migration in China provides an opportunity to address those research gaps. During the past three decades of economic reform, China’s massive rural-to-urban migration, which has often been transient and circular, has affected the well-being of rural children who have accompanied their migrant parents to cities (Xu & Xie, 2015). By comparing rural-to-urban migrants with urban native adolescents in south China, this study focuses on gender differences in the psychological health of internal migrant children, and considers how far these differences are informed by victimization stressors and stress-moderation mechanisms related to social support relationships.

Gender and Migration-Related Child Health in China

By 2015, an estimated 277.47 million adult rural residents in China had moved from the largely impoverished, agriculture-dominated rural regions of the western and central inland provinces to cities on the eastern seaboard in search of better work opportunities (China National Bureau of Statistics, 2016). This figure was 27.3% times higher than the comparable 2010 figure recorded by the national census. These rural migrants included around 35.8 million adolescents below 18 years of age (Wang & Mesman, 2015). Internal migration within China is plagued by strong institutional barriers to movement under the long-standing household registration (hukou) policy adopted in the 1950s. Reinforcing an unbalanced rural–urban divide, the hukou system assigns an agricultural (rural) or nonagricultural (urban) residency origin to individuals at birth, tying their rights (or lack thereof) to the entitlements inherent in their hukou status. As a result of that system, migrant children from rural China share the fate of their migrant parents. They are treated as second-class citizens who are barred from attaining permanent urban citizenship in their host cities (J. Wu, 2010). They are also denied equal access to subsidized education, health care, and many other social services in urban China (Sun, Chen, & Chan, 2016; X. Wu & Zhang, 2015), which in turn hinders their urban adaptation (Yuan, Fang, Liu, Hou, & Lin, 2013).

The vulnerable position of China’s rural migrant children in the urban migration process has prompted extensive studies of their well-being. To date, two meta-analyses of this body of literature (Sun et al., 2016; Wang & Mesman, 2015) have been conducted on their health and social functioning outcomes. Targeting the health outcomes of 25 selected studies, Sun et al. (2016) revealed that migrant children in public schools present significantly more mental health (internalizing and externalizing) problems than their urban-born peers, whereas migrant children in private, mostly unlicensed migrant schools have broadly similar outcomes. They also showed that migrant children are exposed to higher physical health risks (eye problems, anemia, and oral health problems) due to their lack of vaccination and health insurance. Wang and Mesman’s (2015) synthesis of 41 selected studies found evidence for publication bias against studies indicating less favorable academic and social competence for migrant children. Apart from these meta-analyses, research documenting and accounting for gender differences in migrant children’s health has been sparse (Choi, 2016).

It seems important to consider the intersection of gender with child migration in the context of China. Preference for sons, rooted in traditional patrilineal culture, has been enforced under the one-child policy in rural rather than in urban China for more than three decades; however, because the new two-child policy has officially been in effect since early 2016, whether son preference will be bolstered across urban and rural China remains to be seen. There is evidence that urban parents are increasingly willing to invest in urban singleton girls (such as by providing them with education) under the one-child policy, which eliminates opportunities for parents to discriminate against daughters (M. H. Lee, 2012). However, the patrilineal culture in rural China has been reinforced by economic concerns. In view of agricultural labor demands putting a premium on sons, the one-child policy has been relaxed in rural areas, allowing rural couples to have a second child if their first child was female (J. Li, 2004). Heavy financial reliance on sons is further driven by the weak institutional support for the rural elderly (Ebenstein & Leung, 2010). Economic constraints in poorly developed rural regions also make it less rational for patrilineal families to allocate resources to girls (Zhang, Kao, & Hannum, 2007). It turns out that son preference impedes female child health care and intensifies health inequalities in rural China (J. Li, 2004). Patriarchal belief may be stronger among Chinese rural children, with the result that an enduring gender bias against rural daughters, along with the marginalization of rural migrant status, may produce more feelings of inferiority among migrant girls versus migrant boys. This view is echoed by the broader immigration literature, which speaks to gender-based health inequalities within both internal and transnational immigrant societies of origin characterized by a strong patriarchal system (Malmusi et al., 2010). Through processes of patriarchal domination and disempowerment, females are more likely than males to experience relative deprivation and disadvantages in access to health care opportunities within immigrant groups (Borrell et al., 2008).

Gender and Migrant Victimization

The victimization of juveniles ranges from minor aggression (e.g., verbal/relational aggression) to violent aggression (e.g., being robbed by force or assaulted) (Hamby, Finkelhor, & Turner, 2013). Links between victimization and the psychiatric impairment (e.g., posttraumatic stress and depressive disorders) of adolescents have been well established (Ford, Elhai, Connor, & Frueh, 2010). Understanding victimization in migration is particularly worth considering because immigrant youths are more likely to be victimized by peers and community violence than their nonimmigrant counterparts (Jaycox et al., 2002; Sulkowski, Bauman, Wright, Nixon, & Davis, 2014). Victimization rates also vary across immigrant groups as a function of intergenerational segmented assimilation (Peguero, 2009), racial–ethnic diversity (Juvonen, Nishina, & Graham, 2006), and routine lifestyle (Peguero, 2013).

This is a promising line of inquiry, but few migration scholars have examined migrant victimization by gender, even though gender has been identified as a major correlate in the victimization field in general (Hong et al., 2014). Limited evidence (Koo, Peguero, & Shekarkhar, 2012; Le & Wallen, 2009; Peguero, Popp, & Koo, 2015) suggests that Latino and Asian immigrant boys confront more school victimization than their female counterparts, findings that parallel research on general populations showing that young males generally report increased victimization (Hamby et al., 2013). From the gender socialization (Hamby et al., 2013) and lifestyle perspectives (Koo et al., 2012), boys are more reinforced for aggression than girls, due to gender stereotypes, and are prone to unsupervised extracurricular or delinquent activities, thereby putting them at an elevated risk of victimization. Notwithstanding the available evidence of differential exposure to migrant victimization by gender, the effects of those gender disparities on the well-being of adolescent migrant populations remain obscure.

As far as China’s internal migration milieu is concerned, little research has been done on the prevalence of victimization among rural migrants. Findings on interpersonal discrimination against rural migrants in urban China, arising from institutional discrimination within the hukou system (Chen, 2013), may imply a greater risk of victimization. Rural migrants are often blamed for poor public safety in cities, and this perception has spurred urban residents’ fear of migrant crime (Cheng & Smyth, 2015) and hostility toward migrants (Nielsen & Smyth, 2008; Yuan, Fang et al., 2013). Nevertheless, existing studies have not considered whether rural migrants respond differentially to discrimination based on gender.

The present study connects the social stress, conservation of resources, and gender identity perspectives to elucidate the effect of the migration–gender–victimization intersection on health. The social stress paradigm in the fields of deviance (Ganem, 2010) and health (Thoits, 2011) unanimously argues that strain-producing situations including victimization trigger negative affects ranging from anger to anxiety and depression. As further specified by the conservation of resources theory (Hobfoll, 2001), certain populations such as teenagers and migrants are more susceptible to the adverse mental health consequences of resource loss emanating from victimization because these people are at a disadvantage in terms of their resource reserves (Hill, Kaplan, French, & Johnson, 2010). Migrant susceptibility to victimization may also be a function of gender identity. Abada, Hou, and Ram (2008) argued that when adolescents develop gender role identifications, boys become more prone to developing instrumental characteristics that can protect against depressive symptoms. At the same time, girls become less confident in their problem-solving capabilities; yet, the opposite is true for boys. The gender role identifications and concomitant differences in coping strategies may explain why young females are less able to withstand the problem of victimization (Abada et al., 2008). However, the Chinese context may shape the gender identity development in ways not considered by scholars in a Western context. Gender bias in the patriarchal culture of developing societies such as rural China, as discussed earlier, may intensify female identification with problem-solving incompetence. We therefore argue that young female migrants from rural China suffer the double disadvantage of being marginalized migrants and disempowered females and could be even more sensitive to the health-undermining effect of victimization than male migrants.

We should be aware that victimization does not necessarily confer more health deficits on migrant girls relative to their male peers if the level of stress from victimization is moderated. The social stress and coping perspective (Thoits, 2011) maintains that social support ties offer a salient psychosocial resource that can lessen the deleterious psychological effects of stressful conditions. In terms of victimization, the psychosocial functions of social ties are that they enable teenaged victims to reappraise the stress of victimization in light of the knowledge that help and support are available; they are encouraged to seek constructive, problem-focused coping rather than avoidance-focused alternatives to prevent repeated victimization (Hammack, Richards, Luo, Edlynn, & Roy, 2004; Hill et al., 2010). There may be gender disparities in the stress-moderation effect of social support. Given their stronger interpersonal caring orientation (Gore, Aseltine, & Colten, 1993), females tend to report larger social networks than males (Fuhrer & Stansfeld, 2002) and mobilize others for support in stressful circumstances, including victimization, more than males do (Robbers, 2004; Taylor et al., 2000). These observations in the West replicate in the context of China, as suggested by Bao, Haas, and Pi (2007), who evinced the impact of gendered utilization of social support in reaction to strain on delinquency among urban and rural teenagers. In the migration setting within China, it is conceivable that social ties are of greater importance to migrant girls versus migrant boys, and that social ties may matter more for migrant girls in attenuating the negative effect of stress, such as victimization, on mental well-being.

Current Study

We propose three hypotheses based on the foregoing discussion:

Hypothesis 1: Migrant boys may experience more victimization than migrant girls.

Hypothesis 2: Victimization may be more strongly related to lower psychological health for migrant girls than for migrant boys.

Hypothesis 3: The link between victimization and psychological health may be moderated by social ties, and as such, the buffering effect may differ by gender for migrant adolescents.

In analyzing the buffering effect, we adopt a richer perspective on social ties by distinguishing the local ties that link migrants to their receiving cities from the translocal ties that link them to their origin villages. The salience of differentiating translocal and local ties lies in the burgeoning evidence of translocal networks on the health benefits (Donato & Duncan, 2011), favorable status evaluation (Jin, Wen, Fan, & Wang, 2012), and identity formation (Halilovich, 2012) for migrants both in transnational and internal migration settings. We hypothesize a positive interaction between victimization and local/translocal ties, whereby the unfavorable psychological health effect of victimization is reduced by the presence of social ties among young migrants and especially migrant girls.

Although we focus on rural-to-urban migrant adolescents, we also include a sample of urban native adolescents for comparison. This enables us to determine the possible unique features of victimization experiences and mental health in both genders of migrant adolescents.

Method

Sample

The data were used from “Stuck in the City: Migration and Delinquency Among Migrant Adolescents in Guangzhou,” a study conducted between June 2010 and November 2011. Guangzhou, the largest city in Southern China, has been the hub of rural–urban migration influx in coastal China (L. Li & Li, 2010). We used a stratified cluster sampling of the middle schools in Guangzhou based on the 10 administrative urban districts and the school funding types (public school or private school for migrant children) to recruit rural migrant and urban native participants. Overall, 22 public schools (with between one and three public schools in each of the 10 districts) and 10 informal schools for migrant children (from nine of the 10 districts, as one district has no schools for migrants) joined the study. Migrant children who do not have household registration in their receiving cities are forced to enter informal schools due to discriminatory barriers to entering public schools (X. Wu & Zhang, 2015).

Each participating school randomly assigned one eighth-grade class for data collection. Research assistants administered anonymous, self-report questionnaires to the participants in classrooms. Our analytical sample comprised 482 rural-to-urban migrant students (males = 276, females = 206) and 838 Guangzhou (urban) native students (males = 435, females = 403). The Survey and Behavioral Research Ethics Committee of the author’s university approved the study procedures. Informed consent was obtained from the students and their parents through the coordination of the participating schools.

Variables

Dependent variable of psychological health

We adapted the Kessler Psycholgoical Disress Scale (K6) (Kessler et al., 2002), which diagnoses nonspecific mental illness in the general population, to measure psychological health. The respondents were asked how often they felt nervous, hopeless, anxious, depressed, or worthless within the previous month (often = 1, never = 4). Higher scores represented better psychological health (five-item scale, α = .87).

Victimization

This predictor gauged how often the respondents were victimized during the previous 12 months (never = 0, often = 3). The scale covered minor and severe victimization: having something stolen by someone, being robbed by someone, being deceived for money or things by someone, being threatened by someone with force to get money or things, being physically assaulted by someone, being teased or insulted by schoolmates, being hit by schoolmates, and being teased or insulted by teachers (eight-item scale, α = .78).

Local ties with host community

Local ties were indexed by two kinship measures (parent–child ties and local ties with relatives) and three nonkinship measures (teacher–child ties, ties with local friends, and neighborhood cohesion) in the receiving city (Guangzhou). Parent–child ties were gauged by eight questions: “How often do your parents show interest in your school life?” (never = 1, often = 4); “How often do your parents engage in leisure activities with you?” (never = 1, often = 4); “How well do your parents take care of your daily needs?” (very poorly = 1, very well = 4); “How often do you talk to your parents when you are unhappy?” (never = 1, often = 4); “How often do your parents give you support and encouragement?” (never = 1, often = 4); “How much do your parents understand you?” (not at all = 1, very much = 4); “How satisfied do you feel with your communication with your parents?” (very dissatisfied = 1, very satisfied = 4); and “How is your relationship with your parents?” (very poor = 1, very good = 4; eight-item scale, α = .87). Local ties with relatives were measured by one item, which inquired about the number of relatives in Guangzhou with whom the respondents’ families had regular contact (none = 1, many = 4).

For the nonkinship measures, the respondents’ relationships with their teachers in Guangzhou were captured by five questions: “How many students are the teachers close to?” (none = 1, most = 4); “How often do you talk to your teachers?” (never = 1, often = 4); “How much do you think the teachers care about the students?” (not at all = 1, very much = 4); “How fairly do the teachers treat the students?” (unfairly = 1, fairly = 4); and “How does your class master teacher rate?” (very poor = 1, very good = 4; five-item scale, α = .84). To estimate ties with local friends, the respondents were asked the following question: “How often do you seek help from friends in Guangzhou?” (never = 1, often = 4). Neighborhood cohesion was constructed based on four statements, rated on a five-point scale (strongly disagree = 1, strongly agree = 5): “Most people in this neighborhood know each other”; “People in this neighborhood are willing to help each other”; “People in this neighborhood get along well with each other”; and “People in this neighborhood are trustworthy” (four-item scale, α = .89).

Translocal ties with home community

This migrant-specific measure was indexed by two variables relating to ties with relatives and friends in the sending villages. The migrants were asked to report how often they had been in contact with relatives and friends in their home community while living in Guangzhou (never = 1, often = 4).

Covariates

We controlled for gender, age, school type (public vs. private for migrant children), and standard of living, which we measured by asking the respondents to state how many of 14 amenities (e.g., self-contained kitchen, air-conditioner, computer, motorcycle) were available in their living quarters. We also considered three migrant-specific covariates: years of residence in Guangzhou, fluency in the Guangzhou dialect (cannot understand or speak it at all = 1, understand and speak it well = 4), and perceived receptivity of Guangzhou natives to nonnatives (not accepted at all = 1, well accepted = 5).

Statistical Analysis

All analyses were performed in Stata 14.2. Missing observations (constituting 0.3%-5.5% of cases) were imputed by using the multiple imputation method (Amelia program; King, Honaker, Joseph, & Scheve, 2001). Ordinary least squares regressions were used to model the relative contributions of victimization and social ties to the continuously measured psychological health outcome for different genders in the migrant and urban-born samples. To assess whether social ties condition the victimization–psychological health relationship in different genders, the interactions between the victimization and social ties measures were individually added to the models. Examination of the variance inflation factors for the interaction and its component parts revealed that none exceeded 1.52 and, therefore, the multicollinearity problem was modest. A z statistic (Paternoster, Mazerolle, & Piquero, 1998) was computed to further determine whether the regression estimates of victimization, social ties, and interaction effects differ significantly across genders in the migrant and urbanite samples. To accommodate our data nested within schools and minimize the misestimation of standard errors, the regressions were based on robust standard errors clustered by school (Williams, 2000). We also included school fixed-effects estimators in all the regressions to adjust for the school’s unobserved effects on psychological well-being.

Results

Descriptive and Bivariate Statistics

Table 1 depicts the sample statistics of the variables stratified by gender and migrant status. As anticipated, migrant girls fared significantly more poorly in terms of psychological health than migrant boys, and this gender pattern also existed in the urbanites. Both migrant and urban native boys encountered significantly more victimization than their female counterparts.

Table 1.

Descriptive and Bivariate Statistics for Gender-Specific Rural-to-Urban Migrant Adolescents (n = 482) and Urban Native Adolescents (n = 838).

	Range	Migrant sample			Urban native sample
		Boys (n = 276)	Girls (n = 206)	Test statistics	Boys (n = 435)	Girls (n = 403)	Test statistics
		M/% (SD)	M/% (SD)	Test statistics	M/% (SD)	M/% (SD)	Test statistics
Psychological health	5-20	13.96 (3.92)	13.04 (3.87)	t = 3.53**	13.59 (4.12)	12.87 (3.84)	t = 2.06*
Victimization	0-24	3.13 (3.57)	1.92 (2.62)	t = 4.55***	2.88 (3.55)	1.78 (2.05)	t = 4.05***
Local ties with host community
Parent–child ties	8-32	21.20 (4.88)	20.99 (5.27)	t = 0.55	22.59 (4.78)	23.02 (4.77)	t = 1.18
Local ties with relatives	1-4	2.92 (0.88)	3.05 (0.80)	t = 2.44*	2.44 (0.92)	2.38 (0.86)	t = 1.08
Teacher–child ties	5-20	13.56 (3.31)	14.16 (3.29)	t = 2.93**	13.87 (3.28)	14.09 (2.88)	t = 0.93
Ties with local friends	1-4	2.59 (0.88)	2.77 (0.80)	t = 1.99^†	2.93 (0.76)	3.08 (0.66)	t = 3.47**
Neighborhood cohesion	4-20	15.41 (3.89)	14.81 (4.36)	t = 1.74^†	16.12 (3.83)	15.71 (3.74)	t = 2.05^†
Translocal ties with home community
Contact with home relatives	1-4	3.06 (0.85)	3.01 (0.93)	t = 0.63	—	—	—
Contact with home friends	1-4	2.44 (0.92)	2.33 (0.95)	t = 1.52	—	—	—
Sociodemographics
Age (years)	12-18	14.77 (0.80)	14.63 (0.80)	t = 2.18*	14.43 (0.60)	14.40 (0.62)	t = 0.76
School type
Public school		24.3%	28.6%	χ² = 1.09	97.9%	98.5%	χ² = 1.01
Private school for migrant children		75.7%	71.4%		2.1%	1.5%
Household amenities (number)	0-14	8.43 (2.98)	9.12 (2.70)	t = 3.49**	9.72 (2.44)	9.84 (2.26)	t = 0.92
Migration variables
Years of residence in Guangzhou	1-18	8.60 (4.24)	8.76 (4.67)	t = 0.32	—	—	—
Fluency in Guangzhou dialect	1-4	3.24 (0.85)	3.25 (0.79)	t = 0.10	—	—	—
Perceived receptivity of Guangzhou natives to nonnatives	1-5	3.80 (0.94)	3.76 (0.94)	t = 0.27	—	—	—

Note. To compare gender-specific responses, t and chi-square tests are used for the continuous variables and the categorical variable of school type, respectively. Both tests include the survey design effect to account for school clustering.

†

p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Looking at local ties with the host community forged by migrants, there were significantly more local ties with relatives, teachers, and friends for migrant girls compared with their male counterparts. However, migrant boys perceived significantly stronger neighborhood cohesion. No significant gender difference in parent–child ties was found in the migrant sample. In terms of translocal ties with relatives and friends in the rural home among the migrants, the gender difference was not statistically discernible. Among the urban natives, girls reported having significantly more ties with local friends, whereas boys reported having stronger neighborhood cohesion. Other forms of ties did not differ significantly between genders among the urbanites.

Main Effects of Victimization and Social Ties

Table 2 describes how victimization, local ties, and translocal ties relate to the mental health of different genders in the fixed school-effects regression models. The association between victimization and suboptimal psychological health was stronger in migrant girls (b = −1.341, p < .01) than in migrant boys (b = −0.920, p < .01). A similar pattern was observed in the urbanites, with victimization being more predictive of the poor psychological health of urban-born girls (b = −1.772, p < .001) than that of urban-born boys (b = −1.233, p < .001). The z statistics confirmed that the victimization effect varied significantly across genders in both samples.

Table 2.

School Fixed-Effects Regression Estimates (Unstandardized) for Main Effects of Victimization and Social Ties on Psychological Health of Different Genders in Rural-to-Urban Migrant and Urban Native Adolescents.

Independent variables	Migrant sample			Urban native sample
	Boys (n = 276)	Girls (n = 206)	z test of difference of coefficients	Boys (n = 435)	Girls (n = 403)	z test of difference of coefficients
	b (SE)	b (SE)	acrossgenders	b (SE)	b (SE)	across genders
Victimization	−0.920 (0.192)**	−1.341 (0.210)**	1.480^†	−1.233 (0.187)***	−1.772 (0.296)***	1.539^†
Local ties with host community
Parent–child ties	0.075 (0.047)^†	0.076 (0.033)*	0.017	0.101 (0.048)*	0.144 (0.040)**	0.688
Local ties with relatives	−0.233 (0.241)	−0.144 (0.391)	0.194	−0.030 (0.173)	−0.215 (0.125)	0.867
Teacher–child ties	0.080 (0.068)	0.221 (0.082)*	1.324^†	0.049 (0.055)	0.177 (0.066)*	1.490^†
Ties with local friends	−0.107 (0.234)	−0.448 (0.323)	0.855	0.343 (0.191)^†	0.365 (0.253)	0.069
Neighborhood cohesion	−0.114 (0.311)	0.194 (0.297)	0.186	−0.042 (0.211)	−0.097 (0.225)	0.178
Translocal ties with home community
Contact with home relatives	0.064 (0.354)	0.175 (0.367)	0.218	—	—	—
Contact with home friends	0.292 (0.193)	0.714 (0.133)*	1.800 *	—	—	—
Sociodemographics
Age	−0.228 (0.277)	0.151 (0.284)	—	0.051 (0.212)	−0.011 (0.195)	—
School type (1 = public; 2 = private)	−5.760(1.397)***	−5.118 (0.922)***	—	−0.990 (0.541)^†	−0.028 (0.573)	—
Household amenities	−0.289 (0.292)	−0.164 (0.383)	—	0.027 (0.239)	0.674 (0.177)**	—
Migration variables
Years of residence in Guangzhou	−0.018 (0.349)	−0.196 (0.261)	—	—	—	—
Fluency in Guangzhou dialect	−0.092 (0.316)	0.170 (0.392)	—	—	—	—
Perceived receptivity of Guangzhou natives to nonnatives	0.525 (0.344)	0.173 (0.213)	—	—	—	—
Model R²	.237	.357		.279	.304
F statistics	3.546***	4.978***		12.082***	16.208***

Note. Robust standard errors clustered by school are in parentheses.

†

p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Closer teacher–child ties in the host city (b = 0.221, p < .05) and closer translocal ties with friends in the rural home (b = 0.714, p < .05) were significantly related to better psychological health for migrant girls but not for migrant boys, and those gender differences were significant in terms of z statistics. Although the psychological health of migrant boys and girls was significantly predicted by parent–child ties in the host city (b = 0.075, p < .10, and b = 0.076, p < .05, respectively), the effect of such ties was insignificant across genders. Local ties with relatives, friends, and neighbors in the host city, and translocal ties with relatives in the rural home, were not predictive of within-gender and between-gender variations in psychological well-being among the migrants.

Among the urbanites, ties with teachers significantly predicted the girls’ psychological health (b = 0.177, p < .01) but did not predict that of their male peers, with the z statistics indicating a significant gender disparity. Although parent–child ties were significantly associated with psychological health in urban-born boys and girls (b = 0.101, p < .05, and b = 0.144, p < .01, respectively), the effect across genders was not discernible as informed by the z scores. Ties with local friends predicted the urban-born boys’ psychological health only (b = 0.343, p < .10), but the predictability of such ties across genders was nonsignificant. Ties with local relatives and neighborhood cohesion predicted neither the within-gender nor the between-gender variations in psychological wellness of the urbanites.

Moderation of Victimization

Table 3 summarizes the findings of our interaction analysis, which estimated whether the relationship between victimization and psychological health was moderated by the social ties of different genders while adjusting for the main effects of the predictors. Within the migrant sample, none of the interaction terms was a significant predictor of the boys’ psychological health. However, we detected three significant interaction effects on the migrant girls’ psychological health in the expected positive direction: between victimization and teacher–child ties in the host community (b = 0.092, p < .05), between victimization and contact with relatives in the home community (b = 0.663, p < .05), and between victimization and contact with friends in the home community (b = 0.748, p < .01). The z statistics further indicated that the interaction effects of victimization with those three forms of social ties differed significantly across genders, thereby illustrating the greater influence of social ties moderation for migrant girls.

Table 3.

Summary of School Fixed-Effects Regression Estimates (Unstandardized) for Victimization/Social Ties Interactions on Psychological Health of Different Genders in Rural-to-Urban Migrant and Urban Native Adolescents.

Independent variables	Migrant boys (n = 276)			Migrant girls (n = 206)			z test of difference of coefficients across genders
Independent variables	b (SE)	Model R²	F statistics	b (SE)	Model R²	F statistics	z test of difference of coefficients across genders
Victimization/Local Ties interaction
× Parent–Child Ties	0.013 (0.038)	.237	3.326***	0.038 (0.035)	.361	4.694***	0.484
× Local Ties With Relatives	−0.171 (0.265)	.239	3.442***	−0.019 (0.415)	.357	4.630***	0.309
× Teacher–Child Ties	0.023 (0.042)	.237	3.333***	0.092 (0.030)*	.372	4.952***	1.337^†
× Ties With Local Friends	0.326 (0.203)	.250	3.764***	−0.371 (0.300)	.363	4.710***	0.124
× Neighborhood Cohesion	−0.211 (0.245)	.239	3.338***	0.379 (0.304)	.362	4.716***	0.430
Victimization/Translocal Ties interaction
× Contact With Home Relatives	0.226 (0.199)	.241	3.516***	0.663 (0.255)*	.379	4.275***	1.351^†
× Contact With Home Friends	0.091 (0.293)	.237	3.291***	0.748 (0.199)**	.385	4.115***	1.855 *
	Urban native boys (n = 435)			Urban native girls (n = 403)			z test of difference of coefficients across genders
	b (SE)	Model R²	F statistics	b (SE)	Model R²	F statistics	z test of difference of coefficients across genders
Victimization/Local Ties interaction
× Parent–Child Ties	0.036 (0.019)^†	.283	11.054***	0.044 (0.039)	.306	14.704***	0.184
× Local Ties With Relatives	0.185 (0.130)	.282	11.109***	0.157 (0.327)	.304	14.611***	0.080
× Teacher–Child Ties	0.007 (0.041)	.279	10.848***	0.129 (0.077)^†	.310	15.012***	1.399^†
× Ties With Local Friends	0.116 (0.171)	.280	11.021***	−0.421 (0.372)	.307	14.711***	0.745
× Neighborhood Cohesion	−0.063 (0.150)	.279	10.875***	0.436 (0.241)^†	.310	15.026***	1.314^†

Note. Interaction terms are entered individually to the models while controlling for the main effects of all the victimization, local ties, translocal ties, and sociodemographic variables. Models for migrant boys and girls additionally adjust for the migration variables. Robust standard errors clustered by school are in parentheses.

†

p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

For the urban native sample, victimization interacted only with parent–child ties for the boys in the hypothesized direction (b = 0.036, p < .10). Victimization also had positive interactions with teacher–child ties and neighborhood cohesion for urbanite girls (b = 0.129, p < .10, and b = .436, p < .10, respectively). Similar to the migrant sample, the z statistics showed that the interaction effect mattered significantly more for urbanite girls.

Discussion

Central to our study is the question of how victimization relates, along gender lines, to the psychological health outcome of Chinese rural-to-urban migrant vis-à-vis urban-born adolescents. In brief, our findings complement the wider migration and victimization literature by underlining the importance of the gender dimension.

This study demonstrates that vulnerability to victimization stress within migrant populations is gendered. The consistent effect of victimization uncovered by our analysis supports our conjecture that victimization is more closely related to poor psychological health for migrant girls than for migrant boys. Although we found, according to our hypothesis, that migrant boys were exposed to more victimization than migrant girls, migrant girls appeared to be more vulnerable to the influence of victimization, which was more detrimental to their mental well-being than to that of migrant boys. This could have been one of the main factors accounting for the gender differences in health: that, migrant girls suffered worse effects to their psychological well-being than migrant boys. Such gendered vulnerability similarly existed in urbanites, yet migrant girls were lower in vulnerability than urbanite girls possibly due to counteractive migrant resilience (Cheung, 2014).

This study also substantiates the role of gender in the mitigation of migrant victimization stress. Females tended to benefit more than males from the direct effect of certain social ties on their mental health status, and this feature was more pronounced for migrants than for urban natives. An even more salient result is that the buffering effect of social ties on the victimization–health link was far stronger in migrant girls versus migrant and urban-born boys, which conforms to our posited hypothesis. Specifically, victimized migrant girls were more likely than their male counterparts to turn to social ties with their teachers in the host city and translocal ties with relatives and friends in the rural home, which in turn reduced the adverse mental health sequelae of victimization for migrant girls. This buffering effect was also stronger than that in urban-born girls. Altogether, our results point to the particular importance of supportive social ties for female migrants under stress, which might embody the patriarchal influence of China discussed at the outset of the article. More broadly, they add to the knowledge of the gendered stress-buffering mechanisms of the social stress model.

Our results can inform policy making on the provision of health care to rural migrant children in China. Studies of gender inequality in migrant health have cast considerable light on the interventions of adults’ sexual risk behaviors and maternal health (Yang & Xia, 2006; Yuan, Qian, & Thomsen, 2013). Nevertheless, the gender issue has been overlooked in the health care of the expanding population of migrant children (Choi, 2016). Based on our findings, effective measures to promote mental health in teenaged migrants and, thus, gender equity in child health should recognize and manage particularly the migrant girls’ vulnerability to victimization stress and their availability of social support for stress coping.

These findings should be considered in light of their methodological limitations. First, given the cross-sectional nature of the study, we were able to capture the contemporaneous effects of victimization and their moderation by social ties, but the long-term causal effects on the gendered variations in the health of young migrants remain unknown. Second, we did not distinguish the forms of victimization (e.g., relational/verbal vs. overt) between genders to evaluate their effects on health status because the gender samples were small, and the highly and negatively skewed victimization data might not have sufficient variation to detect any statistical significance. Improved data that are longitudinal and involve larger gender samples would enable future research to draw more definitive conclusions about the gender–victimization–health nexus. Third, we lacked the relevant measures for gender beliefs, and so, the influence of patriarchal culture in the context of China is not clear yet. However, cultural changes in rural origins with the increasingly migration-driven diffusion of gender-egalitarian values from urban destinations are possible (Lu & Tao, 2015) and may abate the marginalization and stress vulnerability facing the female migrants. Further investigation should look into beliefs in patriarchal versus egalitarian values, which may elaborate the mechanisms underlying the pathway from gender and victimization to health outcomes within migrant populations.

Despite these constraints, this study, which focuses on internal migrating adolescent populations in China, has implications beyond the study setting. Investigating gendered vulnerability to sources of social stress such as victimization and gendered perceptions of coping resources would reveal useful approaches to clarifying the relationship between gender and child health in future migration studies.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Data of this article were funded by the South China Programme, Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Author Biography

Nicole W.T. Cheung, PhD, is an associate professor of the Department of Sociology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include sociology of deviance, juvenile delinquency, drug abuse, gambling, and migration and adolescent health. Her work appears in Addictive Behaviors, Social Science & Medicine, Health & Place, Journal of Gambling Studies, and Journal of Youth & Adolecence.

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