A Study on the Impact of Parental Migration on the Lives of Children Left Behind in Northeast China

Population mobility has become an inevitable trend in the process of social transformation in contemporary China. By comparing children with one or both parents migrating and children from non-migrant families, this thesis aims to examine the impact of parental migration on the development of left-behind children and its underlying mechanisms. Using a mixed-method approach, this thesis draws on an original survey of school children (N=933) and in-depth interviews with children, parents, grandparents, and teachers (N=58) in Hunchun City, Northeast China. Specifically, this thesis explores the impact of parental migration on children’s education and psychological wellbeing, allowing for variation depending on the gender of the migrant parent and exploring children’s social support (schools and extended family relationships) as sources of resilience in the context of parental migration. This thesis triangulates quantitative and qualitative data from different viewpoints and finds that, overall, maternal migration has a strong impact on children's development and, in particular, on children’s psychological wellbeing, suggesting that the absence of mothers as primary caregivers based on the traditional gender division of labor exacerbates the vulnerability of left-behind children, despite the increasing feminization of migration. On the other hand, the findings show that schools and extended family relationships serve as sources of resilience for children’s development to a certain extent, suggesting that children, as social actors, can use their social networks as support to adapt to the challenges posed by parental migration. By adopting a child-centered perspective, this thesis sheds a more positive light on the impact of distant parenting on children’s development and enriches the literature on left-behind children in the Chinese context.