Rural-to-urban migration and adolescent delinquent behaviors: evidence from Hunan and Guangdong in China

ABSTRACT

Analyzing data of a merged sample of two Chinese student surveys conducted in two rural counties of Hunan province and in the capital city of Guangdong province, this paper examines the impact of parental migration on rural children’s involvement in delinquent behaviors. We compare delinquency of non-migrant and left-behind children in the countryside, rural-to-urban migrant children, and urban local children. Both rural children left behind by one migrant parent and those left behind by both migrant parents are similar to rural children without parental migration in terms of delinquent involvement. The situation of rural-to-urban migrant children is noticeably worse, as they are more likely to engage in delinquent behaviors than rural children without parental migration. Nevertheless, rural-to-urban migrant children are not more prone to delinquency compared to their urban local peers. We also found an acculturation impact in the study because the odds of engaging in delinquent behaviors first increases and then decreases for rural-to-urban migrant children when they stay longer and learn some local language in the hosting city.