Friendship Network Segregation and Psychological Well-Being Among Migration Children in China

During the past four decades, China has experienced unprecedented growth of economically driven rural-to-urban migration. An increasing number of rural children migrated with their parents. Migrant children may face significant institutional barriers and personal discrimination, which may hamper their social integration in receiving communities. One of the most important indicators of social integration is whether migrant children make friends with locals. During adolescence, peer groups increasingly become an important context in which adolescents develop. Whether and how they interact with local students in the school context may be consequential to their well-being: on one hand, local friends may bring locale-specific knowledge that may help migrant children integrate into the receiving community. Moreover, migrant children with local friends may have more positive beliefs about locals and perceive less discrimination, which may benefit their psychological well-being. On the other hand, making friends with other non-local children may provide a sense of security and belonging, as well as strong emotional and instrumental support. Little is known about the segregation of local and non-local children in migrant children’s friendship networks and its consequences for psychological well-being in China. We used data from a nationally representative sample of junior high school students and found that non-local boys were at a disadvantage in terms of making friends with local students, compared with girls. Non-local boys were more likely to befriend other non-local students, whereas non-local girls were equally likely to befriend non-local and local students. Higher likelihood of making friends with other non-local students, given the contextual distribution of local and non-local students in the school, is negatively associated with the psychological well-being of non-local boys, but not girls. The disadvantage in social integration of non-local boys is consistent with previous findings. Further analysis will incorporate data from a follow-up survey conducted in the following year.