A Research On Social Adaptation And Social Support For Urban Female Marriage Immigrants

Through the investigation of non-Shanghaiese daughter-in-law's in X street of one downtown district in Shanghai, this paper depicts the social adaptation and social support of China urban female marriage immigrants, and analyses the various factors that influence their social adaptation.This paper is composed of 5 chapters.The first chapter is designated to the literature review and the design of this research paper. It reviews the previous existing research theory, the past experience and achievements from domestic and overseas academia's on the subject of female marriage immigrants' social adaptation and social support. On the basis of this review, the author outlines her basic thought process and the overall framework of this research paper.The second chapter is on female immigrants in Shanghai. It focuses primarily on those female immigrants in Shanghai who targeted on migration into city via marriage, and also on sorting out the government policies for this specific group of people. Firstly, this paper briefly recalls the process of female migration into Shanghai since the opening of Shanghai city; then it analyzes the reason for the continuous increase of numbers of cross-area marriage over the recent year, and sorts out the various policies for marriage immigrants implemented by the various levels of Shanghai municipal government; finally it gives a brief description of the sample population in this investigation and research.Chapter 3, 4 and 5 are the core of this research paper. Chapter Three is an analysis of the urban female immigrants' social adaptation; Chapter Four studies their social support, and Chapter Five discusses the various factors that influence their social adaptation.In the third chapter, through the analysis of the first hand statistics and material collected, this paper analyzes the social adaptation for urban female marriage immigrants from three aspects, that is, economic adaptation, life adaptation and psychological adaptation. It proposes four social adaptation models for urban female marriage immigrant. This chapter focuses on the following new perspectives. The first one is that female marriage immigrants in urban areas has distinct difference from the rural immigrant labor workers in their social adaptation although both groups are of lower social class in the cities and come from rural areas. The past study did not analyze the social adaptation between male and female immigrant workers from the angle of gender difference, and consequently thinks that the social adaptation of immigrant workers bear the same characteristics of progression from economic to social and then to psychological adaptation. However, this study shows that female marriage immigrants start their social adaptation progress from psychological adaptation first. Although they commonly have lower income and live in below average housing conditions struggling to get a permanent residence in city, they do have relatively better psychological adaptation. This indicates that different purposes of getting into the city have different social adaptative influence to the new urban immigrants. The second perspective is that female marriage immigrant do not enjoy an improved social status because of the marriage though they succeed in getting into city. To paraphrase, female marriage immigrants haven't changed their social status through marriage. From the perspective of social adaptation in general sense, urban female marriage immigrants should be categorized and belong to a group of "marginal" people caught in between rural and urban population.In their fourth chapter, based on the characteristics of these urban female marriage immigrants, the author firstly takes the angle of their life cycle to analyze the social support they obtained and then the various type of social support. Finally based on the analysis of first hand material, the author summarizes the characteristics of their social support. The perspective prevailing this chapter is that the social adaptation of female marriage immigrants is in close correlation with the social support they obtain. Out of the analysis of the investigated material and the comparison with past related studies, this paper finds that: the scale of social network for female marriage immigrants is relatively of small size, and smaller than urban permanent residents, and even smaller than rural immigrant workers. From the aspect of the composition of this social network, it is primarily composed of "strong relationship", which is the same as related study for rural immigrant workers. From the access strategy for social support, they tend to rely on family support and self support to obtain necessary social support. Compared with the related research and study for urban working women, the female marriage immigrants do not posses a diversified strategy for accessing social support. The family, relatives especially direct relatives provide a relatively full range of social support for these female immigrants, including practical support and emotional support; in the same while, the support from neighbors, friends and colleagues are rather short. In the composition structure of the social support for female marriage immigrants, it is rather obvious that the non-official or non-formal social support is more permanent and plays an important role, while the formal or official social support are overtly lacking.This fifth chapter studies the various factors that influence their social adaptation. While the past related studies took the angle of macro level study such as household registration system to analyze the social adaptation for a specific group of people, this paper tackles this problem from a more holistic approach. It analyzes the various factors that influence the social adaptation for female marriage immigrants from the following three aspects: 1) personal resources (education, family status in marriage, reference group), 2) social support and household registration system, and 3) social and cultural factors. Among these various aspects, it is a new and rennovative concept and method to approach this study on their social adaptation from their family status and reference group for the study of the influencing factors. The negative factors of influence are education, social support and household registration system. They lead to the shortage of resources, and result in a lower social status for these female marriage immigrants, which hinders them from proper social adaptation from the aspects of financial well being and their identity recognition. To some extend, harmonious family relationship and relative higher family status play an important role in psychological compensation, which helps them with better social adaptation.