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

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...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Asian journal of criminology 2018-09, Vol.13 (3), p.207-229
Main Authors: Shen, Yinzhi, Zhong, Hua
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescents
Attachment
Behavior problems
Criminal justice
Criminology and Criminal Justice
Internal migration
Juvenile delinquency
Juvenile justice
Law
Law and Criminology
Middle school students
Migrants
Migration
Peers
Political Science
Risk factors
Rural areas
Rural urban migration
Secondary school students
Social control
Social Sciences
Teenagers
Urban areas
Urban crime
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Summary: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.
ISSN:1871-0131
1871-014X
DOI:10.1007/s11417-018-9267-z