Hermeneutic Phenomenological Inquiry: Risk and Protective Factors for the Left-Behind Children in the Northern Shaanxi Province, China With Gender Comparison
The rapid industrialization and uneven regional development of China over the past few decades have forced a large number of young and middle-aged people in rural areas and small towns to leave their hometown and undertake burdensome manual jobs in urban areas. Many of them have become parents. Moreover, limited by the Chinese national residency registration system and the higher cost of living, it is hardly possible for migrant children to be incorporated in urban public education. These facts contribute to the widespread Chinese left-behind children phenomenon. Shaanxi province as one of the impoverished provinces in China is no exception concerning the aforementioned issue. This research presents the lived experience of left-behind children living in northern Shaanxi province, China through the lens of resilience theory. Herein a hermeneutic phenomenological inquiry is employed to identify inner and outer risk factors faced by those left-behind children who are in primary school stage and probe the protective factors (internal assets and external resources) they possess. This study attempts to excavate how these protective factors can moderate or reduce the repercussions of risk exposure on the Chinese left-behind children’s development. Unstructured observations, including on-site observations in the classroom, life, and interpersonal relationship, were conducted in 2018 and remote classroom observations were completed in 2020 due to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Face-to-face and remote interview data were thus respectively collected in 2018 and 2020. Successively, there were fourteen 9-13-year-old left-behind children (seven females and seven males), eight guardians, and six teachers participating in interviews. Given the complexity and particularity of these groups of Children, remote pre-interview activities (e.g., visual metaphor and storytelling on WeChat) were specifically employed in 2020. These activities enabled the child participants to recall and select memories to share, diminishing the inequitable power relationship between the researcher and the ii A HERMENEUTIC PHENOMENOLOGICAL INQUIRY children. The findings display the experiences of this group, including the risk factors (i.e., internalized and externalized problems) and the promotive factors (i.e., internal assets and external resources). It is argued that the findings in the study may potentially serve as viable targets for prevention and interventions and socially inclusive education of left-behind children in China. Based on the findings, the researcher recommends specifically resilience-based interventions in policies and practices to intervene in the trajectory from risk exposure to associated negative effects, in facilitating a more supportive and inclusive life and educational process for this marginalized group in China.
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Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina