Context is Key: the Neighborhood Effect in Youth Delinquent Development across Native and Migrant Students

• In Event: Criminology of Mobility. Panel 4. Ethnicity, youth and crime.

Abstract

Neighborhoods provide important developmental contexts. Growing up in neighborhoods with high poverty, crime and unemployment can significantly impact delinquency among youth (Sampson et al., 2002). Previous research has identified child and parenting behaviors that pose risk or protection to (violent) delinquent development (Hoeve et al. 2009). This research, however, has only paid limited attention to these influences in the neighborhood context while neighborhood characteristics may affect to what extent influences provide a real risk or protection to delinquent development (Gorman-Smith et al., 2000). For instance, a risky lifestyle might pose little threat in low-crime and higher social cohesion areas but could elevate delinquent risk in more socially disorganized neighborhoods. Importantly, young people with an immigrant background are often overrepresented in more disadvantaged areas and research had shown that developmental contexts may influence them differently than native youth (cf. Van der Gaag & Steketee, 2018).

This study examines associations between neighborhood context, child and parenting behaviors and self-reported offending among native and migrant youth in Western European countries. The study was conducted with a subsample of the third International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD3), a large international study among 12 to16-year-old high school students across more than 27 countries (Enzmann et al. 2018). The subsample included students from five Western European countries (Austria, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland; N=18,897). I performed a moderation analysis through logistic regression with interaction terms for neighborhood context – here social disorganization and informal social processes- to examine differential associations across native and migrant youth.
The preliminary analyses reveal differential influences between child and parenting characteristics and violent offending across neighborhood contexts. Native youth appear to benefit more from protective factors in disadvantaged neighborhoods with higher social disorganization than their migrant counterparts. More presence of social informal processes in the neighborhood appears more beneficial to migrant youth.

Author

• Renske Sanne van der Gaag, Assistant Professor Youth & Family, Child and Family Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands