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This research uses a mixed‐methods analysis to examine how being left behind impacts the cognition/education, nutrition, and mental health outcomes of children in rural China. We find that parental migration increases household income and decreases care, and these impacts vary according to location, socioeconomic status, and age. We also find that families generally recognize these impacts. Our findings offer a more general view of the effects of being left behind on childhood outcomes than previous research, which often used small sample sizes from limited geographic areas or age ranges. Although our research focuses on China, the findings are relevant to other developing nations where working‐age individuals often migrate domestically or internationally in search of work, such as Mexico and the Philippines.

This study measures the economic impacts and constraints of parental imprisonment over the left-behind children in the District Lower Dir in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. The data is collected through the interview schedule prepared in accordance with the Sekaran table (2003) of the standard sample size using the Chi-square test. The findings of the study show a highly significant association between parental imprisonment and their children having difficulty managed their expenses. Similarly, results show a significant association between parental imprisonment and their children's interest in cellular phones and luxurious equipment and facilities. Additionally, the analysis shows that due to lack of proper supervision, there is a significant association between parental imprisonment and their children's misuse of the daily expenses of the household. Likewise, the data shows a highly significant association of these children with a lazy attitude toward income generation for the livelihood of their family. Similarly, the assessment shows a significant association of these children having produced economic needs in an illegal method. Furthermore, a highly significant association is found in children of imprisoned parents having a financial background from the middle class thus waste a lot of money in parties and other gatherings with friends.

This article examines how martial arts students retell their stories about being left behind and how they have experienced, viewed, and struggled with the invisible violence. Popularly known as the "hometown of Chinese martial arts," Dengfeng is home to 48 registered martial arts schools and more than 70,000 full-time students. Drawing on 12-month-long fieldwork, this article highlights how martial arts students have (re)constructed the meaning of home(lessness) through bridging their past as left-behind children and the present as martial arts students. This article argues that such redefining of home(lessness) is resulted not only from the practice of invisible violence but also from how martial arts students engage with the structural, symbolic, and normalized violence.

The past two decades have seen exponential growth of urbanisation and migration in China. Emerging from this growth are a myriad population of floating children and left-behind children and the ever greater social-spatial interpenetration that places these children at risk of undesirable wellbeing. The living and schooling of these children are fraught with potholes and distractions in the context of migration and urbanisation. Extant work often treats floating children and left-behind children as two discrete populations and comes to grips with their wellbeing separately. The deficit model and the 'do-gooder' approach have prevailed for a long time, intending to fix the "problems" and correct the "abnormalities" associated with these children. This book differs, however, in its efforts to blur the dichotomy between floating children and left-behind children; in its transformative view and strength-based approach that recast vulnerabilities into opportunities; and in its focus on the nurture of enabling ecologies instead of the nature of individual inferiorities. The book grapples with social inequality, inclusivity, and diversity through the discussions of wellbeing, wellbecoming, and resilience of floating children and left-behind children. It invites families, schools, communities, social organisations, and governments to rethink and recognise the qualities of left-behind children and floating children. The book will be of interest to research students, sociologists of education, educational studies scholars, social workers, school professionals, and policy makers in and beyond China

Through field investigations in two populous Chinese provinces, this study proposes a grounded theory of digital compensation afforded by smartphone usage in the emotion socialisation of left-behind children. Our interviews found that these children suffer from emotional deficiencies or deficits caused by the absence of parents' emotional companionship, a lack of emotional education within the family and a decline in playmates in their rural communities. Our study also revealed the dialectical tension between the possibilities and ramifications of digital compensation. In a miniature media ecology constructed by smartphones, migrant parents provide virtual companionship and peers help build social capital, while stay-at-home grandparents perform a scaffolding or gatekeeping role, providing a symbolic sense of emotional compensation. Instead of addressing the root causes of the children's emotional distress, the compensatory affordances of smartphone use have had concerning consequences of intense feelings of deprivation and social reversal that exacerbate their loneliness and isolation.

AbstractAlthough perceived discrimination has been found to diminish self‐esteem, the mechanism of such effect and potential protective factors demands further study. Grit has been suggested to moderate the effect of risk factors affecting Chinese left‐behind children, but few studies have considered that being left behind might diminish the family and social conditions needed for nurturing grit, and therefore grit might mediate the effect of being left behind and perceived discrimination upon self‐esteem. With the questionnaire data collected from 974 Chinese rural children among whom 517 were left‐behind children, the present study shows that perseverance of effort mediates the effect of being left behind upon self‐esteem. Moreover, within the subsample of left‐behind children, perceived discrimination was found to mediate the effect of time length of being left behind on self‐esteem, while a chain mediation effect was found where perceived discrimination and consistency of interest mediated the effect of the time length of being left behind on self‐esteem. Findings suggest that for left‐behind children, while the adverse social conditions reflected by perceived discrimination affects self‐esteem by diminishing consistency of interest, the absence of adequate parental regulation more directly affects perseverance of effort and therefore affects self‐esteem. Further research directions about practices and interventions targeting at protecting self‐esteem through fostering grit are discussed.

AbstractLeft‐behind children who live away from their migrant parents in rural China have received widespread media attention, especially around their vulnerability and delinquency. To examine the media construction of this population and responsibility attribution for the incidents occurring to them, we used the phronetic iterative approach to analyse 348 news reports published by The Paper, one of China's leading digital media outlets. Our findings revealed that the media constructed a stereotypical portrayal of these children and their families. Moreover, structural inequalities existing in social policies were shifted into personal responsibility in media discourses. This study offers empirical support for the role of news media in shaping public perceptions through their construction and framing processes. We highlight the need to identify structural factors that affect media portrayals of rural families and call for more social support for left‐behind children.

Bullying has become a social concern in schools in China, and school adjustment is an important factor affecting bullying. We explored the mediating role of social support in the relationship between school adjustment and bullying among 600 left-behind children in junior middle schools
in Shandong Province, China. The students completed the School Adjustment Scale, the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, and the Junior High School Bullying Questionnaire. Results showed significant differences in school adjustment, social support, and bullying between the
children of families where only one parent had migrated to the city for work, and children of families where both parents had done so. School adjustment, social support, and bullying were significantly correlated among the left-behind children. Social support played a mediating role in the
relationship between the school adjustment and bullying of these children. The results provide references for school teachers and family members to reduce bullying of left-behind children.