Abstract. This article offers a detailed study of China’s large group of rural children affected by present-day internal labor migration. The author defines key lines of international studies on the effects of labor migration on the mental, physical, and psychological development of the children of migrant workers in China are identified. It is shown that the form of labor migration changing from individuals to couples, and then to entire families, has substantially altered the position of rural children, thus opening new areas of study. There are now more than 100 million children affected by the wave of rural migration in China. Of these, around 70 million continue to live in villages, while more than 35 million have followed their parents into cities. The age at which children move is often between six and 12, due to their entering different grades of public school and numerous aspects of urbanization in China. The considered group of children is neither homogeneous nor static, and a multifaceted approach is needed to study their environment. A number of problems encountered by two subgroups can be identified based on differences in the environments in which a child grows up. The problems of low academic achievement, deviant behavior, limited educational resources, and failure to learn proper social skills are especially acute for children living without their parents in a rural settlement. The difficulties of adapting to an educational institution, cultural evolution, and psychological vulnerability are relevant lines of study when dealing with the children of migrants in an urban setting.
Aspects of Internal Migration in China
Since the start of the policy of reform and opening up (late 1970s), the country’s rapid economic development has created conditions for the active flow of labor resources from villages to cities. Over the years, the authorities have lifted a number of institutional barriers concerning the active migration of rural residents to megapolises and provincial centers, thus spurring urbanization. China is currently a world leader when it comes to urban growth. According to data from Euromonitor, a leading organization in the field of strategic market studies, the share of city dwellers in China is expected to rise from today’s 64% to 68% by 2030.1 This will stimulate the development of manufacturing and services in second- and third-tier cities,2 the economies of which are the new driving force of the country’s development, taking away the initiative from such traditional leaders as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou.3 In the next 10 years, second- and third-tier cities will account for 89% of China’s 61 largest urban areas, due to the authorities’ calculated simplification of acquiring residency permits on these territories.4
According to data from China’s Seventh National Census, the number of people living apart from their families (人户分离人口) was greater than 492 million in 2020 (89% more than 10 years earlier).5 Of these, 117 million were from urban families, while 376 million had families in the countryside. The latter category of families are customarily referred to as the “migratory population” (流动人口). Such families include one or two migrant parents (农民工, or rural workers) and their children (left in their home district in the care of a remaining parent or relatives). In the last decade, the number of rural migrants has grown by approximately 3.5 million per year,6 reaching 286 million (around every fifth inhabitant of China)7 by 2018. These families include around 100 million children who, as a result of labor migration, either live in the countryside in the care of relatives (with no supervision from their parent(s)) or move to cities themselves.8
In the late 20th century, the predominant form of labor migration in China was one-parent (with the spouse remaining where he/she was registered). Movement was not unidirectional but circular, with workers traveling between their permanent homes and the cities.9 People arriving from the countryside were in no hurry to acclimate themselves, since they viewed cities merely as places of work and temporary residence for improving the economic position of their families. Isolation and viewing the city as an alien environment were typical of this earlier type of migrant. The character of migration began to change at the start of the 21st century. Analyses by scholars from American and Chinese universities show that a growing number of rural families have in recent years chosen to move to cities as units, helping to raise the economic and social status of the household. Country folk are increasingly drawn to the urban way of life and the opportunities that local education provides to future generations.10 However, the existence of economic and institutional barriers to moving from village to city means that children below a certain age remain in the former in the care of relatives. A study by Chinese researcher Yin Shasha shows that the ongoing shift of the population is strongly affecting the traditional values and forms of family life in villages.11 The exodus of villagers is altering the gender and age structure of families, while making it more difficult for youngsters to adapt socially and disrupting the atmosphere of family life. Interpersonal relations between spouses suffer less when they migrate to cities together, but considerable harm is done to younger members of the family.
Along with the mental damage inflicted on minors, aspects of their intellectual and psychological development draw much attention from the Chinese and international communities. In Russian historiography, the effect that China’s internal migration has on the fate of rural children is also highly relevant, especially for researchers from the Trans-Baikal and the Far East Territories. This topic has in recent years been discussed in works published in Russian written by Chinese and Russian researchers or combined groups of authors.12 These studies have cast light on the social adaptation and cultural isolation of rural workers, changes in government policies on migration and education, and equal access to education in urban and rural schools.
Because of the continuing rapid changes in domestic migration and the position of rural children, there is a pressing need to bring Russian historiography up to date with scientific data from foreign studies. At the heart of this work is an analysis of the most relevant studies on the children of rural migrant workers left behind in villages in the care of relatives that have been published by Chinese and Western authors in the last four years. The described approaches of joint studies allow us to understand the ongoing transformation of China’s migration flows, better classify the considered group of children, and identify key problems of adolescent socialization.
Main Approaches to Studying Problems of Rural Migrants’ Children Left in Villages in the Care of Relatives With No Parental Supervision
In Chinese society, children whose parents leave their village for employment in the city and are away from home for three (or six) months at a time are commonly referred to as “children left in custody” (留守儿童). In different parts of China, such children might be called “sons and daughters left in custody,” “schoolchildren left in custody,” and so on (留守孩, 留守子女, 留守学生, 留守幼儿, 留守少年, and 空巢儿童).13 In Russian historiography, it is already common to use the term “children left behind,” as is used in the English literature. It should be understood, however, that this does not mean that the children are abandoned. Instead, they are often left in the care of their grandparents (or other relatives) when one parent (or two) must work far from home. In this article, we therefore use the term “children left in custody” to be more precise and not distort the essence of the problem of the children of rural migrants.
The problem of children left in custody (留守儿童) began to be studied actively in China after 2005, when their number started to grow rapidly in the wake of increased flows of internal migration. According to data from the PRC Ministry of Civil Affairs, the number of children left in custody was around 79 million in 2018.14 The children of migrant workers account for more than half of all rural schoolchildren at the level of the mandatory nine years of education.15 Scholars differentiate types of custody according to the caregiver with whom a child continues to live after his or her parents depart: grandparent(s), foster parent(s), older relative(s) (aunts and uncles), younger relative(s) (older brothers and sisters), or no caregiver at all (children capable of looking after themselves).16 Yin Shasha considers children with two parents away at work to be a special category (without parental supervision). According to various estimates, 30 million to 34 million (43% to 48%) children of rural migrants grow up without either parent.17 Studies show that these children have relatively poor interpersonal communication skills and are less capable of looking after themselves. Deviant behavior is widespread: some skip classes, leave school, get into fights, and seriously break the law.18
Along with this, around half of all children left in custody continue to live in villages with only one parent (92% of the time, the mother).19 Situations where the child grows up in a partial family are fairly widespread in other countries as well, but they are usually not the focus of sociological studies. In addition, Chinese migrant fathers do not leave their families entirely; they return to their villages at least once or twice a year for holidays and provide them with material support. However, Chinese researchers believe that the permanent absence of a father is an important factor in raising a child, due to the scale of the problem (36 million to 40 million children) and aspects of the socioeconomic position of rural folk. A recent American study showed that the functions and importance of the family are typically reduced for such children. The absence of one parent and the workload of the other contribute to the abnormal psychological development of a child, resulting in emotional alienation that manifests in a permanent state of distress and feelings of loneliness and inadequacy20 In contrast to their peers, such children have great social and personal problems (anxiety, depression, loneliness) while being subject to Internet dependency, displays of self-loathing and aggression, and sexual violence. They also frequently say they are unhappy, want to leave home, or have suicidal thoughts.21 The results of a 2020 study by a group of Chinese authors from Yunnan Province show that on average, these children develop much slower physically, have a higher risk of accidental injury, and eat great quantities of junk food.22
Many children who remain in the country have considerable problems at school. A combination of several factors in China’s present-day development results in “children left in custody” falling behind their urban peers in academic performance. A large number of today’s foreign studies are devoted to identifying mechanisms that determine trajectories of the development of academic skills among different groups of Chinese children: urban; rural; those left in custody (including groups of children living without either parent); and rural children migrating to the city with their parents.23 Comparisons show that because of objective and subjective factors, the third group of children are in the least advantageous position, especially those living without either parent. On the one hand, the overcrowding and weak staffing and material support of rural schools create ab initio everything needed to deepen the gulf between the educational opportunities of rural and urban schoolchildren. In the primary schools of poor districts, the cost of an academic semester for one student is 100 to 200 yuan; in provincial urban schools, it is 5,000 to 10,000 yuan.24 The Chinese and American authors of one recent study noted that on the budgetary level, there is a dual village-city educational system in which the children of migrants continue to be limited to the educational resources of the village, even though their parents pay taxes in the city. Rural schools remain poorly equipped and underfunded. They serve the development of cities by sending them their best students while keeping most children in the village as reserve labor resources.25
On the other hand, due to aspects of socialization, children left in custody who study under similar conditions with ordinary rural peers lag behind the academic achievements of preschoolers whose parents are not labor migrants. Studies of preschoolers conducted by Chinese researchers show that the children of migrants lag behind their peers from urban and rural districts in all indicators of development – e.g., social, cognitive, language skills, vocabulary, and ability to read Chinese characters.26 One explanation of this requires that we consider the socioeconomic level of the households in which such children live. On average, their guardians have lower levels of education and incomes. They work hard to maintain the household and cannot or do not want to give the children left in their care the attention they need. Recent Chinese interdisciplinary studies on the severity of educational measures showed that children in this category are the ones most likely to be treated harshly by their guardians. Harsh educational measures have strong negative effect on the early development of children. Corporal punishment of children has a negative correlation with preschoolers’ aptitude for learning. For example, analysis shows that spanking a one-year-old child results in lower values of mental development when he is tested again at the age of three.27
Some researchers base their works on the concept of a household’s rational choice, viewing the children of migrants in the context of economic theory. Analysis shows that rural workers leaving for the city to increase spending on the education of children left behind can to some degree mitigate the negative consequences of their absence, having opened new prospects of development for the younger members of the family. Researchers Yang Guanyi and C. Bansak in the United States tried to determine whether the effect of increasing the material gains of a household overcomes the negative consequences of raising schoolchildren in the country with their parents absent. They counted children in educational institutions according to their age and concluded that the labor migration of parents had a positive effect on school enrollment only if they came from poor families. Since poor households usually cannot spend large amounts of money on the education of their children, the additional financing they might acquire by migrating to the city can provide better conditions for schooling a child. However, the better off the family (measured by the size of the household), the smaller the positive effect.28
An American study of 2014 showed that raising the economic status of a household after parents have left can also have a negative effect on a child’s desire for schooling. Money transfers from the city help children follow the misguided practice of not continuing their education and following their parents into labor migration as soon as possible.29 Since rural schoolchildren display less academic success than their urban peers, the migration of parents can only reinforce the inequality that exists among children left in custody. Results from surveys of rural children showed that only 35% of the offspring of migrants had received a secondary education, and only 8% of these were enrolled in colleges or universities. The same indicators for rural children who remained in the village with both parents were higher – 43% and 15%, respectively.30
Children of Labor Migrants in Cities
Complicating the structure of family relations among labor migrants led to rapid growth of the group of rural children migrating to cities along with their parents. In studying problems of their urban life, researchers often use a sociogeographic approach that assumes that the social and physical environment has a strong effect on children.31 The environment is in this case the urban space itself, which determines the environment in which the rural children grow up. The growing influx of the children of migrants into Chinese cities in recent years has produced a great many works by Chinese and then foreign authors who study problems of the socialization of adolescents in their new environment. This partially lowered the relevance of the topic of rural children without parental supervision, bringing a new problem of Chinese society to the fore. The interest of scholars is explained by both the novelty of this social phenomenon and its scale. Chinese society has several terms for categorizing this phenomenon, of which “children on the move” is the expression most often encountered (流动儿童 or 随迁子女).32 There are already more than 35 million rural children in the cities, and this figure will continue to grow. According to forecasts by Chinese researcher Wang Lili, migrants and their children could account for as much as 40% of China’s urban population by 2025.33
There is no clear distinction between groups of children on the move and children left in custody. Depending on the course of a family’s life, a child from the country can repeatedly travel to the city with his parents and back again. However, the flow of children migrating to the city along with their parents is definitely growing. In the last decade, country folk circulating between home and work have increasingly settled in the city and done their best to move the entire family out of the village. A new type of “rural migrants” who differ from their traditional counterparts view the urban environment as their future home. As was shown in a study by Fang Yiping and Shi Zhilei, children between the ages of six and 12 left in the village are increasingly following their parents.34 This situation is explained by features of the hukou (户口)35 system of residency permits, which to some degree limits the access of urban migrants to social services, and there being no possibility of enrolling children above a certain age in a municipally funded preschool. The change in the character of migration is thus reducing the proportion of older children left in custody, but the number of preschoolers living in villages under the care of relatives continues to grow.36
Chinese and foreign authors believe the current transformation of the flow of labor resources from the village to the city is important for the health and proper development of Chinese society. If parents are forced to leave their villages and seek work, joint migration to the city is thought to be the best option from the viewpoint of developing early social and academic skills.37 A great many studies in recent years have, therefore, been devoted to analyzing the strategy of parents going to cities in search of work. The 2018 work by Fang Yiping and Shi Zhilei titled Children of Migrant Parents: Migrate Together or Leave Behind? studied factors that influence the decision of migrants to bring children to the city. It was shown that decisions of family reunification were once mainly motivated by economics, but many migrants are now attracted simply by the urban way of life,38 due to the improved socioeconomic position of villagers and support from city governments. Analysis showed that rural migrants working within the borders of their native province bring their children from the village more than others, especially when sons are involved. Mothers are most consistent in the desire for family reunification. However, at the time a survey was conducted in the city of Wuhan and its suburbs, three quarters of the respondents said their children live where they are registered without either parent; i.e., they fell into the category of children left in custody without parental supervision.
A Chinese study of 2020 ranked the effect that a migrant’s objective and subjective socioeconomic statuses (SES) have on the strategy of moving his family.39 Scholars analyzed data from a 2014 study conducted of 6,748 migrants aged 15 to 59 in regard to their plans for their future residences. It was shown that having a residence permit once played a key role in matters of family reunification and settling in the city, but instituted reforms had altered the situation. Identified barriers were now not institutional but economic. The high cost of urban life regulates the process of family migration, so the main factors are level of income, having a place to live, and stable employment. The higher the objective SES, the more likely family reunification. Results from the study showed that the total income of a family choosing to live together in the city is higher than among those who prefer to live separately (7,250 yuan vs. 6,115 yuan). A migrant’s subjective SES (perceived prosperity, compared to that of fellow villagers and urban residents) play a substantial role as well. Cultural isolation and disdain from neighbors in the city can play a negative role in the matter of rural workers’ family reunification.
Another international group of authors who analyzed data on migration in 15 cities in different parts of China concluded that having a child in the family considerably raises the degree to which new arrivals settle in the city.40 Parents with young children are 1.5 times more oriented toward long-term residency in the city. Scholars note that joint migration of children and parents is important for the country’s stable development, due to less psychological trauma and the effect of education on future generations. The study showed that families of migrants whose children study in urban schools invest more in their education and development than the parents of schoolchildren who remain in the village.41
In the context of inclusion,42 the matter of equal access to education has been an important topic in studies of recent years. Enrollment in an urban school creates many difficulties in the families of migrants, due to their special social status.43 There is also the problem of intracity educational segregation, in which urban schools that have the highest numbers of migrant children and are located in outlying districts and industrial areas remain poorly equipped with material and teaching resources.44
Another relevant line of studies on the problem of childhood in China is the psychological adaptation of adolescents in an urban environment. Chinese researcher Yin Shasha believes the magnitude of the problem is due to the current flawed process of socialization.45 While relations with one’s father and mother are key elements of development, youngsters often live in villages under the care of other family members (or with only one parent) and are categorized as children left in custody. Once they reach the age of seven, when school and socializing with peers become more important, children in primary school can find themselves in an alien urban environment. They then fall into the category of children on the move and lose the ties to which they were accustomed. Breaking the normal order of things in stages of socialization weakens the function of the family, and children no longer feel they are full members of the group. Discrimination from the urban population against the new arrivals reinforces their psychological condition. As a result, children of labor migrants display aggression and poor academic performance, along with a tendency to start bullying their classmates.46,47
* * *
Studies in recent years on the children of labor migrants in China have changed traditional concepts of this problem and demonstrate new approaches of scholars. Analysis of their works reveals different aspects of contemporary Chinese society that influence the position of children left in custody without parental supervision.
First, the change in the form of rural migration from single workers to couples (spouses) and then to families has complicated our understanding of children left in custody. This group of children has ceased to be the only one in works by contemporary authors. Three subgroups of rural children are distinguished, depending on the type of custody and place where they live: left in the village with one parent, most often the mother (around 40 million); left without either parent in the care of relatives, or on their own (around 30 million); and relocated to cities as children on the move (around 35 million). Emotional immaturity, arrested physical development, and high levels of anxiety are characteristic of the first and second groups. Studies show that children in the second group are characterized by deviant behavior and lag considerably behind their peers in the development of cognitive skills. The third group, who move to the city along with their parents, are characterized more by problems of adolescents than those of younger children, due largely to their being enrolled in primary or secondary school when their parents decide to bring their children from the village so they can all live together. Children in the third subgroup encounter problems of socialization in the alien urban environment, fitting into an educational institution, and a scornful attitude from the local population.
Second, three basic approaches used to study the problems of children of labor migrants can be distinguished in works by researchers. The educational approach comprises assessing cognitive and social skills, academic achievement, and progress at school. Attention is focused on establishing ties between existential difficulties and the possibility of gaining human capital through education. The economic approach allows us to divide the positive and negative consequences of parents migrating from the viewpoint of changes in the material conditions of their children’s lives. The effect urban culture and the city way of life have on adolescents and the breaking of social ties to which they are accustomed are examined using a geographic approach.
Third, analysis of contemporary studies reveals prospects for solving existing problems and choosing the orientation of future works. A number of scholars believe the government’s efforts should be aimed mainly at improving the living conditions of rural children left behind without either parent. Such measures would include upgrading rural boarding schools,48 encouraging some rural workers to return to their villages and live with their children,49 and creating a more up-to-date system of preschools in villages.50 Another way of solving the problem of children left in custody inside today’s China is to provide incentives for families to migrate from the village to the city, which Chinese and foreign authors consider to be a positive trend. Analysis shows that for rural children whose parents are forced to leave their homes and seek work, joint migration is a better way of developing early social and academic skills than living with one parent or other guardians in a rural locale.51
Today’s massive influx of villagers with children into the cities demands that the government provide decent living conditions, education, and medical care to rural migrants. A unique system of support and adaptation must be created for the new urbanites. Against the backdrop of rapid urbanization, research on migration issues is becoming more relevant than studying the lives of children left in custody, the number of whom is going to shrink. Promising lines of study are, therefore, the identification of economic and institutional barriers to migrant families in the city, the inclusion of migrant schoolchildren in education, and research on the cultural isolation and mental distress of adolescents.
NOTES:
1. Passport Analysis. “Nearing the Urban Billion: How Urbanization is Changing the Face of China’s Cities. 2019.” URL: https://proxylibrary.hse.ru:3617/portal/Analysis/Tab (Retrieved on March 13, 2020.)
2. Based on standard of living and level of economic and trade development, around 100 of the most developed cities belong to the second and third rank of Chinese domestic classification. They lag behind only cities of the first tier (China’s 19 most developed megapolises).
3. Passport Analysis. “China in 2030: The Future Demographic. 2019.” URL: https://proxylibrary.hse.ru:3617/portal/Analysis/Tab (Retrieved on March 13, 2020.)
4. Yu.A. Seliverstova, Demograficheskoye budushcheye Kitaya [China’s Demographic Future]. Demograficheskoye obozreniye [Demographic Review]. 2020, Vol. 7, # 4, pp. 149-165.
5. 第七次全面的人口普查主要数据情况[Main Data on the Seventh Population Census of the People’s Republic of China]. URL: http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/zxfb/202105/t20210510_1817176.html (Retrieved on July 20, 2021.)
6. Xiao Yuanyuan, He Liping, Chang Wei, Self-Harm Behaviors, Suicidal Ideation, and Associated Factors among Rural Left-Behind Children in West China. Annals of Epidemiology, 2020, # 42, pp. 42-49.
7. OECD. OECD Economic Surveys: China 2019. Paris. OECD Publishing, 2019.
8. Wang Lili, Puti i formy sovershenstvovaniya migratsiyi krest’yon v goroda v Kitaye [Ways and Means of Improving the Migration of Villagers to the Cities in China]. Meditsina. Sotsiologiya. Filosofiya. Prikladniye issledovaniya [Medicine, Sociology, Philosophy: Applied Research]. 2020, #2, pp. 34-38; Yin Shasha, Deti derevenskikh migrantov v Kitaye: issledovaniye problem sotsializatsiyi [Children of Rural Migrants in China: Studying the Problem of Socialization]. Obshchestvo: sotsiologiya, psikhologiya, pedagogika [Society: Sociology, Psychology, Pedagogy], 2019, # 2 (58), pp. 50-54.
9. Wu Yao, Sotsial’naya integratsiya kitayskikh vnutrennikh migrantov: usloviya zhizni vnutrennikh migrantov (agricultural to nonagricultural) i migrantov rabochikh [Social Integration of Chinese Internal Migrants: Living Conditions of Internal Migrants (Agricultural to Nonagricultural) and Migrant Labor]. Vestnik Moskovskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta imeni M. V. Lomonosova. Ser. 18. Sotsiologiya i politologiya [Bulletin of the M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University. Series 18. Sociology and Political Science], 2018, # 4, pp. 235-240.
10. Fang Yiping, Shi Zhilei, Children of Migrant Parents: Migrating Together or Left Behind?. Habitat International, 2018, # 76, pp. 62-68.
11. Yin Shasha, Deti derevenskikh migrantov v Kitaye: issledovaniye problem sotsializatsiyi [Children of Rural Migrants in China: Studying the Problem of Socialization]. Obshchestvo: sotsiologiya, psikhologiya, pedagogika [Society: Sociology, Psychology, Pedagogy], 2019, # 2 (58), pp. 50-54.
12. O.M. Barlukova, Peng Ling, K voprosu o sostoyaniyi obrazovaniya detey sel’skikh migrantov v Kitaye [On the State of the Education of Rural Migrants Children in China]. Vestnik Buryatskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Pedagogika. Filologiya. Filosofiya [Bulletin of Buryatiya State University: Pedagogy, Philology, Philosophy], 2014, # 8, pp. 108-111; Wang Lili, Puti i formy sovershenstvovaniya migratsiyi krest’yon v goroda v Kitaye [Ways and Means of Improving the Migration of Villagers to the Cities in China]. Meditsina. Sotsiologiya. Filosofiya. Prikladniye issledovaniya [Medicine, Sociology, Philosophy: Applied Research], 2020, # 2, pp. 34-38.
Yin Shasha, Deti derevenskikh migrantov v Kitaye: issledovaniye problem sotsializatsiyi [Children of Rural Migrants in China: Studying the Problem of Socialization]. Obshchestvo: sotsiologiya, psikhologiya, pedagogika [Society: Sociology, Psychology, Pedagogy], 2019, # 2 (58), pp. 50-54; V.V. Kuznetsova, O.A. Mashkina, Razvitiye sistemy obrazovaniya v KNR: problemy i puti ikh resheniya [Development of the Educational System in China: Problems and Ways of Solving Them]. Vestnik Moskovskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta imeni M. V. Lomonosova, Ser. 20. Pedagogicheskoye obrazovaniye [Bulletin of M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University. Series 20. Pedagogical Education], 2018, # 4, pp. 14-30; L.A. Ponkratova, Ye.V. Trakova, Vnutrennyaya migratsiya v Kitaye: chto pokazala perepis’naseleniya 2010 goda [Internal Migration in China: What the Census of 2010 Showed]. Rossiya i Kitai: noviy vektor razvitiya sotsial’no-ekonomicheskogo sotrudnichestva [Russia and China: A New Vector of the Socioeconomic Cooperation Development]. L.A. Ponkratova, A.A. Zabiyako, eds. Amur State University, 2014, pp. 109-116; Wu Yao, Sotsial’naya integratsiya kitayskikh vnutrennikh migrantov: usloviya zhizni vnutrennikh migrantov (agricultural to nonagricultural) i migrantov rabochikh [Social Integration of Chinese Internal Migrants: Living Conditions of Internal Migrants (Agricultural to Nonagricultural) and Migrant Labor]. Vestnik Moskovskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Ser. 18. Sotsiologiya i politologiya [Bulletin of the M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University. Series 18. Sociology and Political Science], 2018, # 4, pp. 235-240.
13. 刘群，查贵芳:留守儿童与流动儿童社会性发展研究的现状、问题与前瞻 [Liu Qun, Zha Guifang, “Conditions, Problems, and Prospects for Studying the Social Development of Children Left without Parental Care (the Children of Migrants).” 天津市教科院学报, 2020, # 6.
14. Yin Shasha, Deti derevenskikh migrantov v Kitaye: issledovaniye problem sotsializatsiyi [Children of Rural Migrants in China: Studying the Problem of Socialization]. Obshchestvo: sotsiologiya, psikhologiya, pedagogika [Society: Sociology, Psychology, Pedagogy], 2019, # 2 (58), pp. 50-54.
15. V.V. Kuznetsova, O.A. Mashkina, Razvitiye sistemy obrazovaniya v KNR: problemy i puti ikh resheniya [Development of the Educational System in China: Problems and Ways of Solving Them]. Vestnik Moskovskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta imeni M.V. Lomonosova. Ser. 20. Pedagogicheskoye obrazovaniye [Bulletin of the M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University. Series 20. Pedagogical Education], 2018, # 4, pp. 14-30.
16. Yin Shasha, Deti derevenskikh migrantov v Kitaye: issledovaniye problem sotsializatsiyi [Children of Rural Migrants in China: Studying the Problem of Socialization]. Obshchestvo: sotsiologiya, psikhologiya, pedagogika [Society: Sociology, Psychology, Pedagogy], 2019, # 2 (58), pp. 50-54; Zhao Xinyi, Fu Fang, Zhou Luqing, The Mediating Mechanism between Psychological Resilience and Mental Health among Left-Behind Children in China, Children and Youth Services Review, 2020, #110.
17. Yin Shasha, Deti derevenskikh migrantov v Kitaye: issledovaniye problem sotsializatsiyi [Children of Rural Migrants in China: Studying the Problem of Socialization]. Obshchestvo: sotsiologiya, psikhologiya, pedagogika [Society: Sociology, Psychology, Pedagogy], 2019, # 2 (58), pp. 50-54.
18. O.M. Barlukova, Peng Ling, Kvoprosu o sostoyaniyi obrazovaniya detey sel’skikh migrantov v Kitaye [On the State of the Education of Children of Rural Migrants in China]. Vestnik Buryatskogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta. Pedagogika. Filologiya. Filosofiya. [Bulletin of Buryatiya State University: Pedagogy, Philology, Philosophy], 2014, #8, pp. 108-111.
19. Yang Chenlu, Liu Xiaoli, Yang Yuning, Huang Xiaona, Song Qiying, Wang Yan, Zhou Hong, Violent Disciplinary Behaviors Toward Left-behind Children in 20 Counties of Rural China. Children and Youth Services Review, 2020, #114.
20. Yin Shasha, Ibid.
21. Liu Mengqi, Villa Kira M., Solution or Isolation: Is Boarding School a Good Solution for Left behind Children in Rural China? China Economic Review, 2020, #61.
22. Xiao Yuanyuan, He Lipin, Chang Wei, Self-Harm Behaviors, Suicidal Ideation, and Associated Factors among Rural Left-Behind Children in West China, Annals of Epidemiology, 2020, # 42, pp. 42-49.
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