Rural-to-urban migration for obtaining job opportunities and higher incomes has become a global phenomenon [1]. During the past four decades, China has experienced the largest scale of rural-to-urban migration in human history [2]. Many migrant workers leave their children in their rural hometowns in the care of their grandparents, while others bring them along to their destination cities [3]. Due to differences in culture, values, lifestyles, and socioeconomic status (SES) between urban and rural regions, migrant children and adolescents often encounter social exclusion, prejudice, and discrimination as they adjust to city life [2, 4]. For example, a recent survey reports that approximately 20% of migrant students had experienced origin-based discrimination in urban schools [5]. Higher levels of perceived discrimination are linked to more physical and mental health problems [6,7,8], and may jeopardize general social stability and harmony [9]. The concept of relative deprivation has been useful in understanding migrant populations’ reactions to perceived discrimination and social exclusion [10, 11]. The concept refers to an individual’s anger and/or discontent stemming from the perception that they—or their group—are being deprived of deserved outcomes, compared with referent individuals or groups [12, 13]. Empirical evidence also indicates that perceived discrimination may lead to individual and group-relative deprivation [11, 14, 15]. However, little is known about how perceived discrimination affects migrant adolescents’ relative deprivation and the conditions under which the influence is stronger or weaker.
Perceived discrimination and relative deprivation
Overtly discriminative behavior tends to be socially repugnant, which makes it rather rare. However, discrimination is often manifested in subtle ways in daily life; this makes it difficult to measure discrimination objectively [7]. Therefore, researchers shifted from assessing discrimination that is experienced objectively to discrimination that is perceived subjectively. Perceived discrimination is the subjective perception of prejudicial and/or distinguishing treatment of an individual based on membership in socially recognized groups or specific personal characteristics, including race, gender, disability, ethnic origin, immigration status, social class, or other manifestations of cultural background [16]. Individuals’ pre-existing psychological characteristics are closely related to their perception, and thus, their assessment [8, 17, 18].
Social comparison theory suggests that individuals evaluate their situations in comparison with similar others [19, 20]. Chinese adolescents who migrate from rural to urban areas with their parents may face difficulties that their urban-native counterparts have not experienced. For example, migrant adolescents with non-urban hukou—a household registration that officially identifies a person as a permanent resident of an area and includes information such as name, sex, parents, native place, and date of birth—are not allowed to enroll in the city schools and/or are required to take higher-level school entrance examinations at their hukou localities [8]. As a result, these adolescents may feel that the world is an unjust place where people cannot get what they deserve (cognitive components of relative deprivation [14], and they may be frustrated and dissatisfied with their situation (affective components of relative deprivation [21]. Meanwhile, according to the relative deprivation theory [22,23,24], the development of relative deprivation involves three related elements: first, individuals become aware of the differences between themselves and others whom they consider relevant to them by making social comparisons; second, they evaluate whether the perceived differences seem justified (cognitive component of relative deprivation; and third, upon concluding that they are not justified, they may feel anger or resentment (emotional component of relative deprivation; [25, 26].
Moreover, migrant adolescents may frequently encounter discrimination and stigmatization, based on differences in how they dress and speak, and have difficulty interacting with other students, due to unfamiliarity with common local games and other social forms of entertainment [27]. Hence, migrant adolescents may feel deprived and treated unjustly, compared with their urban or rural peers [13, 28], this perception of discrimination may give rise to feelings of relative deprivation [11]. Furthermore, several empirical studies demonstrate that perceived discrimination influences relative deprivation in disadvantaged groups (e.g., migrant populations [10, 11, 14, 15]. Other existing research also indicates that family environment (e.g., family SES) and school environment (e.g., perceived classroom climate) can play significant roles in migrant adolescents’ relative deprivation [29]. Accordingly, we propose that the social environment (e.g., discrimination) would also influence relative deprivation among migrant adolescents. Therefore, our first hypothesis is that perceived discrimination is positively associated with relative deprivation among Chinese migrant adolescents (H1).
Mediating role of locus of control
Although considerable research indicates the influence of perceived discrimination on relative deprivation, few studies have explored the intermediary processes. The locus of control from social learning theory [30] reflects people’s beliefs about the degrees to which they can control events and outcomes in their lives [31, 32]. The locus of control is conceptualized as being relatively internal or external [33]. Individuals with a strong internal locus of control believe they can do much to control their fates and that their efforts do much to affect their personal achievements and outcomes [31, 34, 35]. Individuals with a relatively external locus of control feel that their lives are largely determined by outside factors (e.g., chance, luck, powerful others, or social structures [30, 36, 37]. Those with a more internal locus of control tend to believe they can manage negative or threatening events (e.g., discrimination; [38] to mitigate negative consequences, while those with a more external locus of control are more likely to experience anxiety and withdrawal in such situations; moreover, withdrawal may aggravate negative consequences [39]. Previous studies indicate that experiencing stressful events (e.g., discrimination) can shift the locus of control externally [35, 40]. Furthermore, a growing body of research observes that perceived discrimination is significantly associated with an external locus of control among disadvantaged groups [33, 38, 41, 42]. Hence, the current study suggests that perceived discrimination is positively related to an external locus of control among migrant adolescents.
Furthermore, high levels of an external locus of control have been associated with a series of mental health problems, including depression [43, 44], anxiety [33], and psychotic experiences [45]. In general, members of migrant populations tend to feel less control over their situations—especially when they are newly arrived—because of their relative unfamiliarity with their new environment [46]. They may compare their situations with those of their new urban-native counterparts and often feel that they have fewer material resources or less than they should be entitled to receive [47], if only because rural Chinese areas tend to have lower wage levels and fewer and/or poorer socially provided resources [48]. Thus, members of disadvantaged groups with an external locus of control tend to experience a greater sense of relative deprivation than members of advantaged groups [49, 50].
Empirical studies also indicate that higher levels of external locus of control are associated with higher levels of relative deprivation among disadvantaged groups [21, 46, 51]. According to Bronfenbrenner’s [52] ecological systems theory, the interaction between individuals and their surrounding environments influences their psychosocial development. The theory regards individual characteristics as crucial to understanding and explaining people’s developmental processes; thus, perceived discrimination (an environmental factor) may affect one’s experience of relative deprivation via individual variables (i.e., locus of control; [51, 53]. Previous research also indicates that locus of control plays a mediating role between stressful events and psychopathological symptoms in children and adolescents [53,54,55,56]. Therefore, this study investigates whether locus of control mediates the association between perceived discrimination and relative deprivation among Chinese migrant adolescents (H2).
Moderating role of the duration since migration
Adolescents and their families, schools, and communities may develop, showing both systematic changes and seemingly spontaneous changes over time [57, 58]. These changes are inevitably rooted in contexts that vary from highly specific to extremely general. Duration since migration, the amount of time since the family moved to the new area, provides some context for the situations contributing to changes and problems related to adapting to a new environment; problems related to the change include perceived discrimination and relative deprivation. However, this context may not be entirely concrete, as the move may have appeared to have been a spontaneous change of every aspect of their rural environments and their family characteristics, from children’s perspective. For instance, for parents who planned the move well in advance, the duration since migration began in those planning stages; however, if the parents suddenly announce the move is coming without having previously discussed it and the reasons behind it with the children, the children’s “duration since migration” is shorter and the change—which, for adolescents, will have impacted every aspect of new lives as migrant adolescents (e.g., biological, psychological, cultural, and socio-ecological levels of organization)—is more abrupt [57].
One of the contextual changes that migrant adolescents often experience is finding themselves with relatively lower social status in their new urban environments, than in their previous rural settings [59]. As a result, their perceptions of the external environment and internal psychological characteristics may change while residing in destination cities [60]. To a certain extent, such changes are systematic over resident time; thus, the duration since migration may be an important demographic variable when exploring the relationships between environmental and individual factors and the sense of relative deprivation in migrant populations [29, 60]. Some researchers point out that migrants may integrate into their destinations over time [61,62,63]. In particular, one empirical study indicates that migrant adolescents’ sense of relative deprivation decreases with the prolongation of their migratory duration in cities [15].
Over time, with a longer duration since migrating to destination cities, migrant adolescents gradually integrate into urban lives and develop new coping skills. As a result, their ability to cope with external and internal risk factors improvise constantly, and their perception of differences from their urban counterparts consequently declines [64]. Hence, the duration since migration may be an important variable to control for in assessing the impacts of stressful events (e.g., discrimination) and individual factors (e.g., external locus of control) on migrant adolescents’ sense of relative deprivation [15]. According to the developmental systems theory [57, 65], which emphasizes the shared contributions of genes, environment, and evolution on development, the emergence of migrant adolescents’ relative deprivation is a dynamic process; this process involves interactions among environmental variables, psychological factors, and duration since migration. Increasingly, studies have also indicated that duration since migration is an important time factor moderating the relationships between family SES and relative deprivation [29] and between perceived discrimination and self-esteem among migrant adolescents [60]. Therefore, we anticipate that duration since migration would moderate the relationship between perceived discrimination and relative deprivation (H3a) and between external locus of control and relative deprivation (H3b) among Chinese migrant adolescents.
The current study
Considering the above background, this study examined (i) the impact of perceived discrimination on relative deprivation among Chinese migrant adolescents; (ii) whether the locus of control mediated this relationship; and (iii) whether duration since migration moderated the relationship between perceived discrimination and relative deprivation and between external locus of control and relative deprivation. To our knowledge, a growing body of literature on relative deprivation considers only the influence of relative deprivation on psychological and behavioral outcomes among adults [13, 66, 67], with little being known about the factors influencing relative deprivation itself and about the influence of these factors among adolescents.
We focused on a sample of migrant Chinese adolescents because existing studies on relative deprivation have overlooked this large and potentially vulnerable group. Migrant adolescents not only have to complete age-typical developmental tasks (e.g., finding ways to take on adult roles that suit their still-emerging adult identities; see [68], they often must also overcome challenging circumstances (e.g., adjusting to unfamiliar city life, encountering apparent/recessive discrimination or prejudice [69]. These challenging circumstances may affect feelings of relative deprivation, which impair the ability to attain age-typical developmental milestones and adapt to their new environments [13, 26]. In summary, we developed a moderated mediation model to investigate our stated hypotheses. Figure 1 shows the proposed model.