This paper examined the social support condition among a probability-based sample of rural married migrant women and local non-migrant women in Shandong province, China. Compared to their local non-migrant counterparts, migrant women recorded lower scores of social support in almost all dimensions. This finding corresponds with past studies on migrant groups in China [25, 26]. It also confirms the results of one of the few social support study focused on Chinese migrant women [21].
The finding that migrant women had less social support is understandable. Their migration is one from underdeveloped remote areas even less-developed countries to a coastal developed province, thus correlates with many stressors such as language barriers, cultural conflicts, ethnic discrimination, change in social network and lack of support systems, which have been identified as influencing factors of social support for immigrants. Besides, as a special group in the migrant population, migrant women are separated from family and friends, depend more on their current husband and have few links with the new community [27]. This may intensify their weakness in social support network. Considering that their primary reasons for migration are marriage and pursuit of a better life, this is especially true. Migrant women also face special gender-related socioeconomic and physiological problems. Prenatal and postpartum problems are noted among them [28–30]. Stress factors in life as acculturation and adaption may intensify these problems. Thus, they are more susceptible to physical and mental health problem than local women.
However, there are also reports that migrant populations have a higher support level than local groups, arguing that immigration enables people to obtain better job and better socioeconomic status, thus acting positively on them [31, 32]. However, although migrant women have risen in socioeconomic status in our scenario, this theory does not apply. Compared with the widely-focused-on immigrants group (e.g., immigrant workers and merchants) whose migrating destination are developed districts, women in this study have several characteristics which may explain their worse social support conditions: (1) possible ethnic and language barriers makes them unable to smoothly adapt to new communities or pursue better socioeconomic status; (2) their origin and special way of migration (marriage) makes them susceptible to discrimination and hinders them from merging into new local societies, and additionally the conservative atmosphere in rural areas may intensify this discrimination; (3) low socioeconomic status of their husbands in local communities weakens their relative affection and living content.
This study is also the first to appraise common life factors as relevant factors of social support condition among married migrant women. One of the most important factors identified is relationship with spouse. Better relationship is related with higher scores in all dimensions of support, which agrees with the conclusions that family plays a critical role in the mental health of female participants [33] and that immigrant women rely more on their husband [28]. Better relationship indicates more support from spouse and family, which helps immigrants diminish acculturative stress and perceived discrimination during migration and adaptation [34]. However, this study also found that utilization of support declines on a higher level of subjective support score. This may because women with better relationship with spouse feel more content and positive, thus less motivated to seek and utilize more social support. It is also noted that women who have more children with their present spouses scored higher in subjective support and the total score. As children serve as the bond of family members, they can influence the relationship with spouse greatly as well as play a big role in the mothers’ mental health.
Additionally, higher family average income correlates with higher support scores in a certain range, since higher economic level satisfies the family’s material needs better and can provide the family with better social status. Higher education level is related with better utility of social support, possibly because better education indicates better adaptation and self-adjustment. On reasons of moving to Shandong, women claiming devotion had higher grades in objective and utilization part as well as in total score than those holding other reasons. This may because those claiming devotion as the reason are more willing to adapt to new environment and seek for help when necessary.
Number of years living in Shandong however showed no significant relation with social support scores in any dimensions, although it had been expected that as immigrants live longer in the move-in place, their social support develops because of better adaptation, as well as their mental health status.
It has been reported that married migrant women were more likely to have HIV-related behaviors (i.e., blood transfusion, premarital sex, extramarital sex, sexually transmitted diseases and drug use), and less likely to have an HIV test [35]. We find that higher total social support score is related to better awareness of AIDS/STD infection. This finding coheres with the theories that social support as a critical part in psychological health has positive effects on migrants’ health status as well as enhances their utilization of health care services. Migrant women with better social support may carry out less health risk behaviors such as extramarital sex and drug use. They also make better use of health care resources so that their AIDS and STDs infection status can be monitored and controlled. Moreover, we found that higher subjective support scores indicate better awareness of AIDS infection. Considering the characteristic of subjective support, it may suggest that support from families, friends, neighborhoods and colleagues play an important part in self-monitoring of AIDS. Additionally, higher scores in utility of support correlate with less possibility of being diagnosed with STDs, suggesting that individual utilization of available social support facilitates the controlling and prevention of STDs infection.
There are certain limitations in this study. First, because we only recruited migrant women who attended medical check-ups, our analysis is susceptible to bias considering that those who did not attend medical care may be worse off in terms of social support and related outcomes. Second, due to the cross-sectional nature of the study, no causality can be determined; and as such, the findings of this study should be applied with caution. Also, it is important to identify possible influencing factors other than those investigated in this study, which may impact social support and social network as well as migrant women’s mental health. Future studies can include factors such as personal willingness of adaptation, interpersonal relationship, and perceived discrimination and their association with social support level. This can help further increase the understanding of the effects of the socio-psychological factors on social support. Finally, pre-migration factors were not investigated in this study, and these could also have had an influence on immigrants’ adjustments and development of social support condition. Additionally, in the analysis of AIDS infection status, there were only 6 people in migrant women group reported knowing themselves to be infected, which may impact the validity of analysis. Despite these limitations, we believe our study also has several strengths. This study is a pioneering analysis of the marriage-based migrant women who plays a critical role in HIV/AIDS prevalence in their ingoing ground. We picked up representative cities to sketch the social support condition and minimized the cost of the study. Additionally, we confirmed the relation of HIV/AIDS infection to social support condition in this group.