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1 – 10 of over 2000
Article
Publication date: 8 January 2019

Cut Maghfirah Faisal and Sherly Saragih Turnip

The purpose of this paper is to compare loneliness between the left-behind children of migrant workers and the non-left-behind ones, and identify the most significant predictors…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to compare loneliness between the left-behind children of migrant workers and the non-left-behind ones, and identify the most significant predictors of loneliness among the left-behind children.

Design/methodology/approach

Incidental sampling was performed to select 629 participants aged 11–16 from 5 schools in the rural areas of Karawang and Lombok in Indonesia. They filled in paper-and-pencil self-report inventories.

Findings

Left-behind children were significantly lonelier than their counterparts were. Emotional loneliness was more affected by parental absence compared to social loneliness. Left-behind children would be more susceptible to experience loneliness if they had more access to entertainment gadgets, experienced less support and intimacy from friends, had been left by their migrant parents more than once, were female, had low self-esteem, experienced emotional difficulties and rarely communicated with their parents.

Research limitations/implications

Qualitative research was needed to provide more elaborative explanation about the findings.

Practical implications

Parents needed to consider the psychological cost and benefit of working abroad to their children. Governments could intervene by limiting the duration and frequency of work among the migrant workers.

Social implications

Some beneficial implications to prevent and reduce loneliness among left-behind children were provided, such as by maintaining the frequency and quality of communication with the children, motivating and guiding the children to interact with their peers and spend less time on entertainment gadgets, as well as encouraging the children to engage in several positive activities to enhance their self-esteem.

Originality/value

This study enriched the understanding about complex relationship between parental presence and adolescents’ mental health despite the fact that adolescents seemed to be more interested in relationships with peers.

Details

Journal of Public Mental Health, vol. 18 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1746-5729

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 11 July 2019

Carl Lin and Yana van der Meulen Rodgers

This study uses migrant household survey data from 2008 to 2009 to examine how parental migration decisions are associated with the nutritional status of children in rural and…

Abstract

This study uses migrant household survey data from 2008 to 2009 to examine how parental migration decisions are associated with the nutritional status of children in rural and urban China. Results from instrumental variables regressions show a substantial adverse effect of children’s exposure to parental migration on height-for-age Z scores of left-behind children relative to children who migrate with their parents. Additional results from a standard Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition, a quantile decomposition, and a counterfactual distribution analysis all confirm that children who are left behind in rural villages – usually because of the oppressive hukou system – have poorer nutritional status than children who migrate with their parents, and the gaps are biggest at lower portions of the distribution.

Details

Health and Labor Markets
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78973-861-2

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 10 January 2019

Tianyuan Luo and Cesar Escalante

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of adult children’s migration on the smoking behavior of rural parents who are left behind and raise the concern that the rural…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of adult children’s migration on the smoking behavior of rural parents who are left behind and raise the concern that the rural residents’ increasing tendency to migrate to urban areas in China nowadays could encourage such a behavior.

Design/methodology/approach

Using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey and applying propensity score matching method and individual-level fixed effects model, this paper addresses the potential endogeneity issues that may arise between the children’s migration decisions and parental smoking behavior.

Findings

This study’s results indicate that rural parents left behind by their emigrant children indeed are more likely to sustain their smoking habit. The validated smoking effect of emigration calls for effective government programs that entail intervention to curb such potentially aggravating health risk, especially among middle-aged and older fathers.

Originality/value

This paper is the first to examine the impact of children’s migration on the smoking behavior of left-behind parents in rural households in China. Our findings call for immediate attention to the smoking behavior of older age cohort in China as the scale of rural−urban migration trend is expected to increase. Moreover, given that many countries in Asia, such as India, Vietnam and Indonesia, are confronting similar issues, our findings could provide useful implications for smoking cessation and control policies in those countries.

Details

China Agricultural Economic Review, vol. 11 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1756-137X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 26 February 2021

Alfiah Hasanah, Bayu Kharisma and Sutyastie Soemitro Remi

This study aims to explore the impact of adult child labour migration on the health of parents and the possible mechanism that contributes to the health of families left behind.

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to explore the impact of adult child labour migration on the health of parents and the possible mechanism that contributes to the health of families left behind.

Design/methodology/approach

Several indicators of parents’ health are analysed and several subgroups – parents of migrant sons, parents of migrant daughters, parents aged 50+ and parents who live in rural areas are investigated. The data from Indonesia Family Life Survey are used and the fixed effects method is used to address potential endogeneity and instrumental variables are applied in the sensitivity analysis.

Findings

The labour out-migration of adult children has a positive and significant association with the health status of the parent left behind. The parents of migrant children are more likely to have a better self-rated health status, fewer episodes of morbidity symptoms, fewer unhealthy days, fewer visits to outpatient care and are less likely to be on medication than the parents of non-migrant children.

Research limitations/implications

The study design in a longitudinal setting, however, there is a relatively many years gap between waves could provide insufficient statistical power for measuring health variations. Future studies should consider to explore possible health outcomes for parents who co-resided with an adult child and the types and severity of various disease conditions.

Practical implications

Highlights challenges in health-care provision for older people in Indonesia and the possible contribution of health disparities in developing countries.

Originality/value

Explores the impact of out-migration of adult children on the health of parents left behind, using very recent data of over a long period of a longitudinal design.

Details

International Journal of Migration, Health and Social Care, vol. 17 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1747-9894

Keywords

Open Access
Book part
Publication date: 29 September 2023

Siqi Tu

This paper describes the parent–child relationships of upper-middle-class Chinese parents and their adolescent children who were “parachuted” to the United States for private high…

Abstract

This paper describes the parent–child relationships of upper-middle-class Chinese parents and their adolescent children who were “parachuted” to the United States for private high schools. With parents remaining in China and children in the United States, thousands of miles away, such a transnational educational arrangement complicates the already volatile parent–child relationships during the adolescent years. Through ethnographic interviews of 41 students and 33 parents, I demonstrate different forms of child–parent relationships in a transnational education setting: those who found that the further physical and temporal distance has brought the parent–child relationship closer through frequent communications, children who experienced “accelerated growth” yet questioned the necessity, and delicate parent–child relationships due to increasing transnational cross-cultural or intergenerational differences. These types of parent–child relationships are not comprehensive of all the lived experiences of the “parachute generation,” yet they shed new light on transnational education and the unintended emotional dimensions of educational migration. In a transnational context for an economically well-off group, parental absence or separation of children and parents is no longer a clear-cut concept and has different layers of meanings, taking into account the frequency of communication, duration of spring and winter breaks and the existence of third-party agents such as for-profit intermediaries (or educational consultants) and host families. The diverse patterns of parent–child relations reveal the heterogeneity and complexities of “doing family” across geographic spaces and global educational hierarchies, as well as the roles of communication technologies, the tempo of mobilities and educational intermediaries.

Open Access
Book part
Publication date: 29 September 2023

Elizer Jay de los Reyes

The production of the ‘good life’ or the ‘less bad-life’ (Berlant, 2007, 2011), especially among generations of the Marcos dictatorship and the Epifanio de los Santos Avenue…

Abstract

The production of the ‘good life’ or the ‘less bad-life’ (Berlant, 2007, 2011), especially among generations of the Marcos dictatorship and the Epifanio de los Santos Avenue revolutions (henceforth, EDSA revolutions) in the Philippines, is animated by the ‘mobility imperative’ (Farrugia, 2016). The mobility imperative includes processes that encourage or demand mobility (Farrugia, 2016) for individuals and institutions. It figures in various ‘systems of practice’ (Levitt, 1998, 2001) among families in migrant-sending communities, government and corporations that magnify how migration is the ticket to better life (McKay, 2012) or its glorification as a heroic act (de los Reyes, 2013, 2014). Among the generations of the Martial Law and the EDSA revolutions, therefore, the ‘good life’ is hinged upon departure as professionals (e.g. nurses and engineers), workers in elementary occupations (e.g. construction and domestic workers) or mail-order brides or pen pals. Put simply, the good life in these generations is a function of remittances.

This chapter examines how the contemporary generation of young people construct the ‘good life’ in differential and new terms (de los Reyes, 2023; McKay & Brady, 2005) from previous generations. Using interviews and vision boards of left-behind children (15–18 years old), it argues that left-behind children critically appraise the ‘mobility imperative’. The chapter shows that there is a growing imagination of alternatives to the migration-induced good life among left-behind children, and therefore, they gradually refuse the ‘mobility imperative’. For them, the aspired good life consists of potentially being employees or entrepreneurs in their own villages and living a life with their own families (de los Reyes, 2019, 2020).

Details

The Emerald Handbook of Childhood and Youth in Asian Societies
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80382-284-6

Keywords

Open Access
Book part
Publication date: 29 September 2023

Abstract

Details

The Emerald Handbook of Childhood and Youth in Asian Societies
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80382-284-6

Article
Publication date: 30 August 2010

Jiang Qin and Björn Albin

Due to social transformation in China, more than 100,000,000 people are migrating within the country. Many parents are forced to leave their children behind when they migrate. In…

Abstract

Due to social transformation in China, more than 100,000,000 people are migrating within the country. Many parents are forced to leave their children behind when they migrate. In 2008, 58,000,000 children were living as left‐behind children, mainly in the rural parts of China (Zhang, 2009).Migration and its accompanying stressors may affect the mental health of the left‐behind children. This unique literature review of Chinese literature summarises the present state of knowledge and reviews the influential factors. Possible approaches to intervention and system reforms are discussed.A literature review was performed of published studies between 2001 and 2008. Databases used were Fujian Medical University Library Interface, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wanfang Data, and VIP Information. The Chinese word for ‘left‐behind’ was used as a key word. Books, book chapters, monographs and studies on caring were searched electronically and by hand. Altogether, 53 items were found, discussed and grouped together. Migration affected the mental health of the left‐behind children in a passive way, especially their emotions and social behaviour.There is still controversy over how serious mental health problems are among children who have been left behind. Life events, personality, coping strategies and social suppor t can be regarded as four main factors that are predictive of mental health, which provides theoretical guidance for intervention. Suppor t and prevention of mental health problems in schools, in families and in primary care should be developed and studied.

Details

Journal of Public Mental Health, vol. 9 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1746-5729

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 15 March 2013

Björn Albin, Jiang Qin and Zhang Hong

An increasing number of people are migrating within the borders of China. Some migrants have to leave their children behind, and 58,000,000 children are estimated to be living as…

386

Abstract

Purpose

An increasing number of people are migrating within the borders of China. Some migrants have to leave their children behind, and 58,000,000 children are estimated to be living as left‐behind children. Earlier studies have found severe mental problems in left‐behind children, but different factors could influence their mental health. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mental health of these left‐behind children and to determine possible influencing factors.

Design/methodology/approach

Data for this study were collected in one province of the People's Republic of China with a validated instrument, the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), to investigate behavior in 13‐to‐15‐year old children.

Findings

No significant difference was found in total difficulty score and in any subscale score of SDQ when left‐behind children were compared with children who were not left behind. A significant difference in emotional difficulty subscale score was found between girls who were left behind and girls who were not. Some socio‐economic factors such as poor family economy and living with relatives, friends or grandparents, were identified as risk factors.

Originality/value

When strategies for support of the mental health in left‐behind children are developed, they will need to be individualized according to the gender, social and economic situation and focused on emotional and conduct problems.

Details

Journal of Public Mental Health, vol. 12 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1746-5729

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 7 November 2016

Fang Chang, Yaojiang Shi, Hongmei Yi and Natalie Johnson

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effect of adult children migration on the health status of elderly parents. Increased labor migration in developing countries that…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effect of adult children migration on the health status of elderly parents. Increased labor migration in developing countries that lack adequate social security systems and institutionalized care for the elderly is a phenomenon that is important to understand. When their adult children go away to work, it is not clear what effect there will be on “left-behind” elderly parents.

Design/methodology/approach

This study employs nearly nationally representative data from five provinces, 25 counties, 101 villages and 2,000 households, collected from two waves of data in 2007 and 2011. This sample comprises a subset of households which include both elderly individuals (above 60 years old) and their grown (working-aged) children in order to estimate the impact of adult child migration on the health of elderly parents in rural China.

Findings

This study finds that adult child migration has a significant positive impact on the health of elderly family members.

Practical implications

These findings are consistent with the explanation that migration raises family resources, which in turn may contribute to better health outcomes for elderly household members.

Originality/value

This is the first paper to attempt to identify the relationship between household migration and the health of elderly parents within the Chinese context.

Details

China Agricultural Economic Review, vol. 8 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1756-137X

Keywords

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