Child Flow Characteristics And Effects Of Urban Social Identity

Migrant children are special groups generated in the process of urbanization in our country. After following their parents from the countryside into the cities, they are bound to face the changes in daily lifestyle, values and interpersonal communication and so on. Whether they can well adapt to city life involves their integration into the city. To build the social integration psychologically braces two aspects:the individual identifies the group or the society and the group or the society accepts the individual. So far, researches about the social identity of the migrant children have most come from sociological view and adopted the qualitative survey. They directly copied foreign theories on immigration to describe integration into urban of migrant children. But there are less empirical researches from the psychological point to examine the structure and characteristics of the social identity of the migrant children. Because of no unified theoretical framework for the social identity of the migrant children, the conclusions drew on basis of the different measurements and theories are difficult to integrate and compare. Therefore, it is necessary to explore the conceptual structure of the social identity of the migrant children and develop the reliable questionnaire. Perceived discrimination usually represents group or social acceptance for the individual. There are more researches and are mature measurements in this area. In this study, we examined migrant children’s current situation of social integration based on the description of urban social identity and perceived discrimination and their effect on social adaption, in particular the role of urban social identity. This study constructed the structure of urban social identity on the basis of home and abroad existing researches. And through semi-structured interviews, text survey, and the group discussion, we have developed preliminary urban social identity questionnaire. The structure was verified by Exploratory Factor Analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis in the Beijing migrant children. Meanwhile, we investigated their current situation of the urban social identity in the individual, family and social environment variables. Based on related conclusions on foreign immigrants, this study explored the role of urban social identity on the relationship between perceived discrimination and social adjustment among Chinese migrant children and compared its role on migrant children in different types of school.Based on the above steps, this study came to the following conclusions:1. The self-edited measure tool:migrant children Urban Social Identity Scale is fit for psychometric rules.2. Urban social identity is a multi-dimensional and hierarchical structure. The outermost layer is the similar behavior to the urbanian, followed by the sense of emotional belonging, and the innermost is the values acceptance, the difficulty of identity gradually increasing from the outside to the inside.3. Urban social identity of migrant children showed the significant difference in self-identification (Be already an urbanian/Still a countryman/Hard to tell), their ages of beginning to live in Beijing(beginning to live in Beijing before/after six), grade(grade1/grade2in the middle school), the education degree of mother(a primary school education or less/a middle school education/a high school education or more), the category of the residents around(more urbanian/more countrymen/both are about the same/never care about that), school types(in public school/in migrant school) and the interaction between school types and gender(boy/girl). Urban social identity of migrant children is the result of interaction among the individual, family and social environment.4. Urban social identity, perceived discrimination and social adaption of the migrant children all showed the significant difference in their the school types, self-identification and their ages of beginning to live in Beijing.5. Urban social identity exacerbated the negative relationship between perceived discrimination and social adaption in all migrant children. Urban social identity in the different range played the opposite role, verifying that whether a variable is a risk factor or a protective factor depends on its scores but not the nature of the variable.6. The above role of urban social identity occurred only in migrant children of migrant school, playing an indirect risk factor to their adaption. But for the migrant children in public school. For all migrant children, perceived discrimination is a risk factor to their adaption in the city. However, it should be paid attention that perceived discrimination had more serious negative impact on the migrant children in public school directly.