Resilience and Well‐Being Among Children of Migrant Parents in South‐East Asia

Abstract

There has been little systematic empirical research on the well-being of children in transnational households in South-East Asia—a major sending region for contract migrants. This study uses survey data collected in 2008 from children aged 9, 10, and 11 and their caregivers in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam (N = 1,498). Results indicate that while children of migrant parents, especially migrant mothers, are less likely to be happy compared to children in nonmigrant households, greater resilience in child well-being is associated to longer durations of maternal absence. There is no evidence for a direct parental migration effect on school enjoyment and performance. The analyses highlight the sensitivity of results to the dimension of child well-being measured and who makes the assessment.

Child Development and Migrant Transnationalism: The Health of Children Who Stay Behind in Ghana and Nigeria

“…Most transnational family studies restrict their focus to children of migrant parents who are in a stable marital relationship (Donato & Duncan, 2011;Jordan & Graham, 2012;Wen & Lin, 2012). In doing so, these studies are able to assess how the parental input in a stable family environment is invested in the health of children in transnational care.…”

“…Although precise numbers of children in transnational care are not available, data show that up to 38 per cent and 21 per cent of Ghanaian and Nigerian children, respectively, excluding orphans, had at least one biological parent who was away in 2008 (GDHS, 2008;NDHS, 2008). For these children, the absence of parents has likely become a common feature of their lives, and scholars are now asking how different contexts of parental absence affect children's wellbeing (Jordan & Graham, 2012;Mazzucato & Schans, 2011) and children's health (Donato & Duncan, 2011;Donato, Kanaiaupuni, & Stainback, 2003).…”

“…Additionally, studies do not often compare health outcomes of children living transnationally with those living in non-migrant families or with those experiencing combined forms of parental absence such as migration, divorce or parental death. Moreover, most studies use measures of children's health based on parental or caregiver assessments, which have been found to under-report child distress when comparing similar outcomes based on children's self-reports (Jordan & Graham, 2012).…”

Parental Absence Accompanies Worse Academic Achievements: Evidence Based upon a Sample of Left-Behind Children in Rural China

“…Previous studies have shown that as compared with their non-left-behind peers, left-behind children were more likely to suffer from a high level of loneliness, life dissatisfaction, and unhappiness (Jia and Tian, 2010;Jordan and Graham, 2012;Su et al, 2013). However, there has been a lack of study exploring the influence of parental absence on children's academic performance among the left-behind children.…”

Children’s Rights, Parental Agency, and the Case for Non-coercive Responses to Care Drain

“…The above claim is compatible with the fact that the overall impact on children of their parents' migration is both complex and disputed (see sources cited in Lutz and Palenga-Mollenbek 2012;Jordan and Graham 2012 Thanks to remittances, migrants' children-just like other family membersare materially better off than before migration and sometimes better off than children whose parents do not (need to) migrate. The money sent by their migrant parents buys them better food, accommodation, and education, but sometimes also functions to single them out among their peers, and even ostracize them (AAS 2006;Piperno 2007a;Isaksen, Devi, and Hochschild 2008).…”