Different experiences in crime and victimization of the Asian ‘model minority’ in the US and the UK

• In Event: Adolescent Victimization and Offending: Empirical and Theoretical Insights from the International Self-Report Delinquency (ISRD) project

Abstract

Despite the large volume of research on the links among immigration, ethnicity, and crime, there are still many unanswered questions. One of these questions is the potential confounding effects of ethnicity and national origin on the hypothesized migration-offending link. The UK and the USA are comparable in many ways, but the case of Asian immigrants highlights the differences between the two countries with respect to the national origin and ethnicity of their migrant groups. We investigate this issue through the analysis of self-reported data from children aged 12-to-16 from the United States (n = 2,366) and the United Kingdom (n = 2,108) collected as part of the International Self-Report Delinquency study (ISRD3). Through OLS regression models, we examine the applicability of General Strain Theory (Agnew, 1994) as an explanation of delinquency in the US and the UK, and we explore whether Asian ethnicity differently impacts the relationship among GST predictors, migration status, and delinquency in the UK and the US. We find an interaction effect between migration status and Asian identity on delinquency in the UK, but not in the US. We conclude with a discussion of the challenges related to quantitative comparative analysis of ‘ethnicity.’

Authors

• Michael Dumont, Northeastern University

• Chris E. Marshall, University of Nebraska Omaha

• Ineke Haen Marshall, Northeastern University