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

• In Event: ISRD Panel 6: Advances in Understanding Juvenile Delinquency and Victimization: Comparative and Methodological Insights

Abstract

Despite the large volume of research on the link between immigration, ethnicity, and crime, there are still many unanswered questions. One of these questions is the potential confounding effect of ethnicity (or national origin) on the hypothesized migration-offending link. The UK and the USA are comparable in many ways, but they differ with respect to the national origin and ethnicity of their migrant groups. This is clearly so in the case of Asian immigrants. In this paper, we explore this issue through the analysis of self-reported data from children 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 impact the relationship between GST predictors, migration status, and delinquency in the UK and the US. We find an interaction effect between migration status and being self-identified Asian on delinquency in the UK, but no so in the US. We conclude with a discussion of the continuing challenges related to quantitative comparative analysis of ‘ethnicity’

Authors

• Michael Dumont, Northeastern University, USA

• Chris E. Marshall, University of Nebraska at Omaha, USA

• Ineke Haen Marshall, Northeastern University