Factors contributing to social support among marriage migrants in HongKong: a longitudinal study

Abstract

Between 2001 and 2011, a total of 509,809 new immigrants have migrated from Mainland China to Hong Kong on the One-way Permit for family reunification, in which 69.7% were female who are typically wives of Hong Kong permanent residents. How these marriage migrants integrate into Hong Kong society and the assessment of their impact to Hong Kong is becoming a pivotal issue. Many studies and surveys indicated that these marriage migrants have encountered tremendous difficulties during their course of immigration adaptation, and many have resulted in severe psychological stress. Extensive literature has empirically documented that social support facilitates immigrants’ ability to make use of relationships to buffer their adaptation challenges and to promote their integration into the new environment. Yet hardly any studies have examined the determinants and changes of social support among these marriage migrants within a longitudinal framework. The purpose of this study is to investigate the determinants of social support, including the structural, functional and the perception of social support. The “Social Support Mobilization Model” suggests that perceived stress leads to an increase in social support. On the contrary, the “Social Support Deterioration Model” suggests that persistent high level of stress erodes social support over time. This study test the Deterioration Model by examining the impact of lingering of stress levels on social support. Using a random sample of 211 Chinese marriage migrants from a two-year longitudinal secondary data, bivariate and multiple regression analyses were performed to examine the associations of social support with acculturation stress, persistent stress, psychological well-being, optimism and perceived neighborhood disorder. Findings indicated that marriage migrants have difficulties in re-establishing their social network outside their own community. Acculturation stress and psychological well-being were found to be the two most crucial factors affecting social support. Acculturation stress predicted both the structural and functional aspects of social support, but not the perceived social support. The psychological well-being, on the other hand, exerted significant influence on both the functional and perceived social support, but not on the structural social support. Results suggested that social support interventions should focus on alleviating acculturation stress, expanding social networking opportunity outside of their own immigrant community and enhancing psychological well-being. Besides, professional counseling and psychological support services should be provided to new immigrants, especially those who have experienced high level of stress.