Differences between Chinese Adolescent Immigrants and Adolescent Non-Immigrants in Hong Kong: Perceived Psychosocial Attributes, School Environment and Characteristics of Hong Kong Adolescents.

Hechao Jiang,Moon Y M Law,Daniel T L Shek

doi:10.3390/ijerph18073739

Abstract

Although the impact of immigration on adolescent developmental outcomes has received extensive scholarly attention, the impact of internal migration, particularly in the Chinese context, on adolescents’ psychosocial development has not been scientifically investigated. This study examined whether mainland Chinese adolescent immigrants (N = 590) and adolescent non-immigrants (n = 1798) differed on: (a) psychosocial attributes indexed by character traits, well-being, social behavior, and views on child development, (b) perceived school environment, and (c) perceptions of characteristics of Hong Kong adolescents. Consistent with the healthy migration hypothesis, Hong Kong adolescents and mainland Chinese adolescent immigrants did not differ on most of the outcomes; Chinese adolescent immigrants showed higher perceived moral character, empathy, and social trust than did Hong Kong adolescent non-immigrants. Chinese adolescent immigrants also showed more favorable perceptions of the school environment and moral character, social trust and social responsibility of adolescents in Hong Kong. This pioneer Chinese study provides support for the healthy immigration hypothesis (immigration paradox hypothesis) but not the immigration morbidity hypothesis within the specific sociocultural context of Hong Kong in China.

Highlights

The present study showed that mainland Chinese immigrant adolescents did not perform worse on most psychosocial indicators, and they performed better on moral character, empathy and social trust
The results showed that there was no difference in life satisfaction between mainland Chinese immigrant students and the non-immigrant students, but Chinese adolescent immigrants scored significantly higher than the nonimmigrant group on empathy
In contrast to previous studies that have focused more on international migration, this study focused on the impact of internal migration within the same country on the psychological and social behavior of adolescents

Summary

Introduction

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. The number of mainland Chinese migrant adolescents in Hong Kong has rapidly grown in the past decades. By the end of 2018, immigrants aged 0–14 from mainland. China accounted for 12.36% of Hong Kong’s population in 2018 [1]. Extensive research has shown that the process of migrating was stressful [2,3,4,5,6]. As adolescence is full of challenges [7,8,9,10], adolescents are more likely to be victims of immigration [11]. Evidence on whether there are psychosocial adjustment differences between immigrant adolescents and non-immigrant adolescents is conflicting [12,13]

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