Is high socioeconomic position a privilege for everyone? Social inequalities among newcomer adolescents in Canada

Aim

This paper investigated 3 social conditions of adolescent health: migration status, socioeconomic position, and bullying behaviours. The aim of this study was to investigate newcomer adolescents to Canada's experience of bullying behaviours, socioeconomic position, and self-rated health, and associations between these factors, compared with non-newcomers.

Methods

This study represents results from a proportional sample of 21,750 adolescents in Canada recruited through the HBSC-Canada study 2017/2018 cycle. The associations between self-rated health and household socio-economic position (SEP), migration status, the four bullying behaviours were assessed via logistic regression analysis that took into consideration ethnicity, gender, grade-level, variations in sampling by using survey weights, and the nested nature of the data.

Results

Newcomers, low SEP adolescents, and those involved in bullying behaviours all reported poorer self-rated health than their counterparts. At first, there were no statistical differences in bullying behaviours across newcomer and non-newcomer youth. However, further sub-group investigation showed that when SEP is considered in this association, there are statistical differences. Bullying behaviours differed among newcomer adolescents based on household SEP. Newcomer youth who are affluent, were more likely to be victims of in-school victimization, of cyber victimization, and involved with perpetrating cyber bullying compared with non-newcomer youth living in deprivation.

Conclusions

Migration, as a social condition and associate of health, when viewed at different levels of SEP is seen to be associated with bullying behaviours among adolescents in Canada, specifically cyberbullying behaviours of victimizing and perpetrating among high-SEP newcomer adolescents in Canada. Those living in deprivation are usually associated with poorer social and health outcomes relative to those living in affluence. This study's findings support intersectional approaches and analyses where intersections of adolescents' traits show unique associations with social and health outcomes.