Lu, Yao. 2014. “Parental Migration and Education of Left-Behind Children: A Comparison of Two Settings.” Journal of Marriage and Family 76: 1082-1098.
The article contributes to the circumstances under which children benefit or suffer from parental out-migration. The study examined how the relationship between parental out-migration and children’s education varies across migration streams (internal vs. international) and across two societies. Data are from the Mexican Life Survey (N=5719) and the Indonesian Family Survey (N=2938). The results showed that children left behind by international migrant parents are worse off in educational attainment than those living with both parents. Internal migration of parents plays a negative role in some cases, though often to a lesser degree than international migration. More specifically, the negative role of internal migration is more significant when either the mother or both parents migrate. In addition, how the overall relationship between parental migration and education balances out varies by context. For instance, it is negative in Mexico but generally small in Indonesia. One plausible explanation is that the development and deployment of public education in Indonesia is worse than that in Mexico, therefore the economic remittance from migrated parents could enhance the education opportunity for children in Indonesia to a better degree. In all, the article complicates our understanding in the relationship between parental migration and education of left-behind children in development countries.
近几十年，父母外出打工（去其它国家或者去国内其它区域）成为发展中国家非常常见的现象。而“留守儿童”的教育问题成为学术界关注的的热点之一。这篇文章选取了两个数据库（墨西哥家庭调查和印度尼西亚家庭调查），通过定量分析方法比较了两个国家内父母移民对儿童教育产生影响的相同点和不同点。研究发现，出国打工的父母对孩子的教育有更大的负面影响。而对父母去国内其它地方打工的孩子来说，如果是母亲外出打工或者父母双方都不在身边，影响也相对比较明显。但是，总体而言，两者之间的关系还是根据具体情况而变化的。比如说，相比较印度尼西亚的留守儿童，墨西哥孩子的教育水平更低。这个可能是因为印度尼西亚总体教育资源不足，父母打工的经济收入在一定程度上可以提高孩子的教育资本，平衡父母不在身边所造成的负面影响。这个研究也有些不足的地方。比如说，数据库无法告诉我们父母对于孩子教育的重视程度。另外，移民父母对家庭带来的经济资助的稳定性也不得而知。