‘Less Social Bonding, More Problems?’: An International Perspective on the Behaviour of (Migrant) Youth

Abstract

Many young people with a migrant background feel less attachment to their social environment and institutions. Their marginalized position is often seen as an explanation for their over-representation in problem behaviours such as crime, drug use or school dropouts. Migrant families live more often in disadvantaged areas because of their high levels of unemployment and economic deprivation, and these areas suffer from high crime levels. Residential turnover further weakens social bonds and social control in these areas. This chapter uses the third sweep of the International Self-Report Delinquency Study to examine whether there is a difference in the bonding of young migrants with their family, school, teacher, friend and neighbourhood compared with people who have been born within the country. It assesses whether differences in bonding explain the over-representation of migrant youth in problem behaviour as delinquency, substance use and truancy.

Appendix

Self-control was measured by nine items from the self-control scale (Grasmick, Title, & Arneklev, 1993) (M = 2.79, SD = 0.64, α = 0.84). We used three subscales: impulsivity, risk tacking and self-centeredness. In the analyses we combined these three subscales to one variable self-control.

Neighbourhood disorganization was measured by a scale with five items: There is a lot of crime in my neighbourhood, drug selling in my neighbourhood, fighting in my neighbourhood, empty and abandoned buildings in my neighbourhood and graffiti in my neighbourhood, with for answering options from fully agree to fully disagree (M = 1.45, SD = 0.66, α = 0.87).

School disorganization was measured by four questions: ‘There is a lot of stealing in my school’; ‘There is a lot of fighting in my school’; ‘Many things are broken or vandalized in my school’; and ‘There is a lot of drug use in my school.’ There are four answering categories from I fully agree until I fully disagree (M = 1.89, SD = 0.68, α = 0.74).

Closely related to lifestyle/leisure is whether or not the youth has friends involved in deviant or illegal behaviour. Admitting to having delinquent friend is often an alternative way of asking about one’s own involvement in delinquency. Research has shown that self-reported delinquency of friends is strongly related with a youth’s delinquent involvement (Warr, 2002). Delinquent friends is a five-item scale asking about the number of friends one has that are involved in drug use, shoplifting, burglary, extortion or assault (M = 0.78, SD = 1.15, α = 0.68).

We also have looked at parental supervision. Recent developments in the literature suggest the importance of distinguishing between different dimensions of parental supervision. There is research that indicates that measures of parental supervision should be able to distinguish between parental knowledge, parental solicitation and child disclosure. If child disclosure is not controlled, detected links between parental supervision and crime can be spurious and dependent on unmeasured variation in child’s own behaviour. This conceptual redevelopment was originally published by Swedish researchers Kerr and Stattin (2000). Recently, the basic idea has been corroborated by Eaton, Krueger, Johnson, McGue, and Iacono (2009). Therefore, we now introduce a new parental control scale, which basically consists of three subscales: parental knowledge scale (three items) (M = 4.23, SD = 0.85, α = 0.80), child disclosure scale (five items) (M = 3.57, SD = 0.80, α = 0.63) and a parental supervision scale (four items) (M = 3.81, SD = 1.02, α = 0.85).