"Group Bullying Toward Multicultural Youth Influences Immigrant Mother’s Extreme Choice"

A study has found that when children from multicultural families are exposed to group bullying, it seriously negatively affects the mental health of their mothers, who are immigrant women.

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On the 25th, Professor Jin-Ho Kim's research team from the Department of Health Policy and Management at Korea University, together with Professor Eun-Hye Ahn from the Department of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis, USA, analyzed 1,466 immigrant women with children in the 4th grade of elementary school and revealed these findings. This is the first time the correlation between bullying experienced by multicultural youth and the mental health of immigrant mothers has been discussed.

Using the 'Multicultural Youth Panel Survey' conducted by the Korea Youth Policy Institute from 2011 to 2019, the research team found that 29.5% of the surveyed children had experienced group bullying, and 2.4% of the surveyed immigrant women reported having experienced impulses toward extreme choices.

The study showed that women whose children experienced group bullying were 1.2 percentage points (p) more likely to consider extreme choices than those whose children did not.

In particular, even when children experienced the same group bullying, mothers with low education and low income showed an increased tendency to think about extreme choices compared to mothers with high education and high income. When mothers’ social and economic status, such as education level and household income, was low, the rate of impulses toward extreme choices was higher.

Professor Kim said, "Korean society’s exclusive attitude toward multicultural youth leads to harm for all members of multicultural families," and added, "Support from the government and local governments to strengthen the social and economic capabilities of immigrant mothers is expected to be meaningfully helpful."

The results of this study were published on the 13th (local time) in the international academic journal Social Science & Medicine.