Parental migration and Chinese adolescents’ friendship networks in school

Abstract This study examines whether and how parental migration may affect adolescents’ friendship networks. Applying random-effects Poisson regression models to survey data collected in Shaanxi province of China in 2017, we provide new evidence that left-behind status has been stigmatized and become a salient attribute in affecting adolescents’ friendship networks. Specifically, current left-behind status has independent, negative effects on the fifth graders’ popularity (in-degree) among their classmates, above and beyond the influence of both individual characteristics and family background. Moreover, we find that the discrepancy in network sizes between left-behind children and children with no left-behind experiences is mostly the result of avoidance encountered among the subgroup of left-behind children in the classroom. Compared to girls, adolescent boys have larger friendship networks, but their friendships are also more likely to be negatively affected by their left-behind status. Left-behind boys are experiencing avoidance by their left-behind classmates, while it is not the case for girls.