‘Save the children!’: Governing left-behind children through family in China’s Great Migration

Abstract

Existing scholarship on the lives and wellbeing of China’s left-behind children often frames the issues as a function of their parents’ migration, which leaves a significant gap in discussing the role of the state in shaping the institutional framework that these families operate within, cope or struggle with. Through critically interrogating public discourses based on articles from a mainstream newspaper and policy documents since the early 2000s, this article situates a sociological inquiry into the discursive and institutional framework addressing ‘the left-behind children problem’ in China within the problematic of the relationship between children, family, and the state. The analysis reveals seemingly ‘disingenuous’ articulations of left-behind children’s value in the mainstream media and official policies. On the one hand, there seems to be a prevailing concern over the welfare of left-behind children which has grave implications for the country’s future development. On the other hand, the dominant discourse attributes left-behind children’s ‘miserable’ plight to their ‘pathological’ family life, which translates into policy efforts to discipline rural migrant families according to a family ideology rooted in urban middle-class experiences. I argue that such inconsistencies should be contextualized in the state’s neoliberal-authoritarian governance of the migrant population in the post-reform era, which perpetuates a stereotype of ‘the pathological family’ to account for left-behind children’s disadvantages while evading, hence up until recent years avoiding to redress, the political-economic factors underlying their plight. I conclude the article by ruminating on the theoretical, social and policy implications of this study.

Assessment of Effect of Perceived Social Support on School Readiness, Mental Wellbeing, and Self-Esteem: Mediating Role of Psychological Resilience

“…Similar findings were found by Fellmeth et al ( 2018 ) who stated that studies have shown that individuals with high social support tend to have higher levels of self-esteem. In addition, according to Gu ( 2021 ), perceived social support is closely related to self-esteem. Social support is a crucial factor that enhances the self-esteem of the LB children.…”

“…According to Gu ( 2021 ), perceived social support is closely related to self-esteem. Individuals having extremely low social support would have low satisfaction levels which would ultimately result in low self-esteem (Xin et al, 2019 ).…”

“…Moreover, the LB children require psychological resilience to enter school because the mental wellbeing of these children is affected by the circumstances (Yeung and Li, 2019 ). The LB children who have high resilience possess self-efficient, social competence, autonomy, and sense of purpose (Gu, 2021 ). The researchers found that the LB children are reluctant to enter school because of a lack of psychological wellbeing (Ramakrishnan and Masten, 2019 ).…”

“…Social support from friends and peers can help improve the psychological resilience of children (Tan et al, 2020 ). According to Gu ( 2021 ), a good relationship among friends encourages resilience in children. Also, different types of social support such as neighbor support and teacher social support can positively impact the enhancement of resilience of children (Chen et al, 2021 ).…”

“…The parents of these children usually leave their children behind their original residence and migrate somewhere else for work (Wen et al, 2021 ). In China and other countries, an increasing trend of LB children has been observed (Gu, 2021 ). Particularly, in Thailand, 20% of children were left behind by their parents as these parents migrated to other areas for earning a living.…”