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Introduction
Dr Juan Chen's research centers around migration and urbanization, health and mental health, and help seeking and service use. Her current research focuses on the impact of local government policies and practices on the ‘in-situ’ urbanization process, w
Skills and Expertise
Additional affiliations
July 2007 - June 2013
July 2013 - present
Education
August 2000 - April 2007
September 1993 - July 2000
Publications
Publications (66)
China’s rapid and ongoing urbanisation has led to the expansion of the local state. The state, traditionally exhibited as physical institutions of government, has emerged virtually in recent years based on intricate network infrastructure systems, such as social media platforms. Scholars contend that a strong physical state infrastructure enhances...
Purpose
There is considerable research on China’s community healthcare, but little examining its delivery from a nurse perspective. This article, set in the context of Shenzhen, elicits community nurses’ views on barriers to healthcare delivery, providing an initial evidence framework to improve community nursing practice at organizational and poli...
The effect of acculturation on migrants' settlement has not been well explored in existing literature. Drawing on the cultural gravity model and the acculturation theory, this study offers a cultural perspective on the urban-settlement intention of rural migrants in China. Employing data from a large survey project, the analysis provides strong evi...
Community nurses remain understudied in research on interactional power, especially in China where community healthcare is an emerging practice. Grounded in French & Raven's typology of social power, this article conceptualises the power of community nurses in a Chinese urban context. Through thematic analysis of textual data from 26 semi-structure...
Urbanization involves a process of state building. As manifest in its infrastructure, the state shapes its interactions with citizens. In this study, we link fine-grained geo-referenced points-of-interest (POI) data of government agencies with the 2018 Urbanization and Quality of Life Survey conducted in 40 localities experiencing rural-urban trans...
China's in-situ urbanization implies a phenomenon where rural populations become new urbanites as their land was reclassified as urban. While studies have suggested that social insurance may play a role in encouraging urban identification, empirical evidence in this field remains scarce. Highlighting the identity construction experience of in-situ...
Previous studies on the social identity of rural-urban migrants in China have often neglected the fact that migration is highly selective. Consequently, the findings generally suffer from survival bias. To overcome this problem, we construct an analytical framework to differentiate six subgroups: rural residents with no migration experience, return...
This study examines how depression and life satisfaction are associated with assets in the form of homeownership in China and whether their relationships differ between men and women, and between urban and rural areas. While the psychological benefits of homeownership are well-documented, how gender makes a difference in this relationship remains u...
Providing access to a range of basic health services, community-based primary health care (CB-PHC) plays a vital role in achieving the goal of health for all. Driven by a strong political commitment, China’s CB-PHC progress in the past decade has been swift and impressive. However, a well-functioning delivery system for care has yet to be establish...
Objectives
Psychoeducation, motivational interviewing, cognitive remediation training, and social skills training have been found to be effective interventions for patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders. However, their efficacy on psychosocial functioning when provided in combination remains unclear, compared with all types of control condi...
This article attempts to provide an integrated conceptual framework for understanding how rural-urban migrants in China integrate into urban society. We propose a three-phase conceptual framework in which the social integration of rural-urban migrants is categorized into circular migration, urban settlement, and urban integration. We argue that the...
Little scholarly attention has been paid to the relationship between children’s subjective social mobility and their “social ecology”. Children’s subjective social mobility is about how they perceive their future social position compared to their parents’. Social ecology refers to the influential multi-layered surrounding factors, including family,...
Although the points systems for hukou conversion in Chinese megacities have been discussed in detail, the issue of policy equity has received scant attention. Drawing on policy documents and on interviews with urban-to-urban migrants in Beijing and Shenzhen, this article examines the issue of equity in the current points systems. Our analysis is ba...
Housing is an important source of identity expression, but the influence of different housing attributes remains underexplored. Drawing on the ‘4Cs theory of housing’ (housing cost, housing conditions, housing consistency and housing context), this study established an analytical framework linking housing to in-situ urbanised rural residents′ ident...
Acculturation and identity are two significant determinants of the psychological well-being of migrants, but how they interactively affect psychological well-being is still underexplored. This study proposes an interac-tional perspective that links acculturation and urban identity to the psychological well-being of rural-urban migrants in China. Us...
Before the economic reforms, the Chinese state relied on mutually exclusive hierarchies within and between rural and urban governance at the subnational level to structure administration, organize populations, and exert political authority. Other than spatial restructuring and population transformation, urbanization in China also involves rural-to-...
Urbanization in China has involved not only the large-scale transfer of population from rural to urban areas through processes of labor migration and land dispossession, but also the re-designation of rural areas and populations as urban through top-down administrative conversion. Despite their significant role in accelerating rural urbanization, i...
Despite the growing literature on loneliness, little attention has been paid to the impact of broader changes in social structure and environment on individuals’ experience of loneliness. Drawing on data from the 2018 Urbanization and Quality of Life Survey (N = 3,229) conducted in 40 localities undergoing rural–urban transition in China, this stud...
Drawing on data from in-depth interviews with twenty-one founder-CEOs of social work organisations (SWOs) in Mainland China, this article develops the concept of ‘strategic resource mobilisation’ and investigates how founder-CEOs’ professional backgrounds influence their mobilisation of resources in three areas—funding, human resources and governme...
Despite growing literature identifying key individual, family, community, and environmental factors as causes for mental disorders during the process of urbanization, the role played by local government has not been taken into account. In this article, we investigate how the effectiveness of local government affects residents’ levels of psychologic...
Reflection is widely practiced in human service professions, but little research has examined whether reflection actually translates into action and, if so, how. This article explores the possibilities and limits of reflective practice by drawing on data collected through reflective interviews with fifteen Chinese social workers on mistakes in prac...
Purpose
This study investigates how the effectiveness of local government affects residents’ levels of psychological distress in areas of China undergoing urbanization. We measure the effectiveness of local governments according to their success in promoting access to the social security system through distribution of social security cards among ci...
The welfare system can be a crucial factor in the urban settlement of rural migrants, but its effects are difficult to determine because to do so one must distinguish the effect of welfare entitlement from the effect of ‘migrant selectivity bias’, which widely exists in cities in developing countries. Using survey data from 15 Chinese cities, this...
Based on data collected from an original factorial survey experiment in the 2018 Urbanization and Quality of Life Survey, this study seeks to test the factors that determine the level of urban identity among the residents of 40 township-level administrative units in newly urbanized areas or potential sites of urbanization in China. Our results indi...
Despite growing concern over socioeconomic inequality in health, few studies have focused on health inequality among older adults. The present study examined the independent and joint effects of socioeconomic status (SES) and family functioning on mental health and subjective well-being and explored the gender differences in such relations. Represe...
Introduction
Urbanization is a risk factor for subjective well-being, and the situation in China is evidence of this general rule (Harpham, 1994; Marsella, 1998; Vlahov and Galea, 2002; Gong et al., 2012). Over the last three decades, China has witnessed the largest peacetime human migration in history and a simultaneous acceleration of urban expan...
Size of population, sources of population, and distribution of population within the city, according to Park, are the first things we should establish when studying a city. During the past 30 years, the composition of China’s urban population has changed considerably. While studies have focused intensively on migrants who leave rural areas to work...
In 2015, one hundred years passed since Robert Park penned his seminal article “The City: Suggestions for the investigation of human behaviour in the city environment” in the American Journal of Sociology. It provided an agenda for the Chicago school of urban sociology, which came to shape urban research for decades to come. Since 1915 much has cha...
Using data from a representative sample of Chinese adults who were surveyed in the Hong Kong Panel Study of Social Dynamics (HKPSSD), we estimate the effects of neighborhood discrimination towards immigrants from Mainland China on the mental health of Chinese residents in Hong Kong. Contrary to our expectations, discrimination towards immigrants fr...
Family members, rather than mental health professionals, are often the first responders for emotional or mental problems, particularly in Chinese societies where family is regarded as the primary care unit. Using data from the third wave of a representative sample of Chinese adults in the Hong Kong Panel Study of Social Dynamics, we investigate how...
In recent years, various levels of the Chinese government have undertaken the task of developing new models of community-based mental health services. Greater availability and higher quality will not result in substantial improvements if those suffering from mental illnesses do not use the services. This article examines not only people’s cultural...
Housing greatly influences the settlement of both internal and international migrants. Yet previous studies have paid attention only to the role of homeownership. This study goes beyond this limitation and investigates how housing conditions measured by ownership, size, quality, location, and housing support including the housing provident fund and...
In the past 30 years, China has transformed from a rural to an urban society. The combination of massive rural-to-urban migration and rapid in situ urbanization has led to significant changes in cities’ neighborhood composition and characteristics, as well as residents’ lifestyles. Such changes have serious implications for individuals’ mental heal...
Previous studies have not paid enough attention to the effect of health on urban-settlement intention of rural-urban migrants in China. Using survey data from the Rural Urban Migration in China project, this article examines how self-rated physical and mental health influence rural-urban migrants’ intention to settle down in cities. First, the resu...
In the past 30 years, China has undergone unprecedented urbanisation: the country's urban population surpassed that of rural areas for the first time in 2011. Despite its soaring popularity, the urban–rural divide in e-commerce use has been persistent and striking. How to promote e-commerce use among the new urbanites to ensure its sustainable deve...
Although Durkheim, Simmel, and other early social theorists posited causal links between urban life and individual despair or distrust, most contemporary analyses of subjective well-being attribute variations primarily to individual characteristics. However, China's recent warp-speed urbanization requires a more dynamic and multi-level analysis tha...
Along with the rapid urbanization in China, the state of mental health also receives growing attention. Empirical measures, however, have not been developed to assess the impact of urbanization on mental health and the dramatic spatial variations. Innovatively linking the 2010 Chinese Population Census with a 2011 national survey of urban residents...
In recent years, the Internet has emerged as an alternative information source on mental health problems. Yet, the profile of the typical Internet help seeker is to be determined. Based on data from a household survey of 2558 Beijing residents, the study investigates online information searches and help seeking for mental health problems. Multinomi...
In the past three decades, the rapid migration and urbanization process in China has led to significant changes in urban neighborhood composition and characteristics, which have serious implications for individuals' mental health status. Using data from a 2011 national survey of urban China, we examine the associations of perceived living environme...
Using a 2011 national survey of urban residents, irrespective of their official hukou status, and the 2000–2009 night-time light data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Operational Linescan System (DMSP-OLS), this paper goes beyond the simple dichotomy of migrant versus non-migrant or rural versus urban hukou to disentangle the proce...
Using data from a 2009 national household survey (N = 2,866), this study investigates the differential experience of perceived institutional and interpersonal discrimination among ruralto- urban migrants in China, and the consequences of these two types of discrimination on measures of subjective well-being. The results indicate that rural-to-urban...
Using data from a national survey with 1,288 respondents, this study investigates the socio-demographic determinants of the first-order digital divide (access to the Internet) and the second-order digital divide (e-commerce use) in China. The survey employed spatial probability sampling technology so it would encompass migrants as well as registere...
While undergoing the unprecedented urbanization process in the past few decades, China has also experienced a major epidemiological shift from predominantly infectious diseases to chronic conditions. Using data from a national survey of 1,288 respondents in urban China, this study examines the prevalence of chronic conditions and receipt of treatme...
China's rapid economic growth has had a serious impact on the environment. Environmental hazards are major sources of health risk factors. The migration of over 200 million people to heavily polluted urban areas is likely to be significantly detrimental to health. Based on data from the 2009 national household survey "Chinese Attitudes toward Inequ...
Although Asian Americans are one of the fastest growing ethnic minority groups in the United States, research on this population continues to lag behind that on other minorities. In this article, we take factors recognized as critical elements to the physical and mental health outcomes of Asian Americans and apply the social determinants of health...
We studied 12 migrant families who lived on the outskirts of Beijing, conducting participant observations and in-depth interviews between July 2008 and December 2009. Adopting the family strengths perspective, we identified the strategies employed by the migrant population to manage family life, the reliance on family networks for help and support,...
Based on data gathered through a household survey of 1,474 urban residents in Beijing, this study examines Chinese help-seeking behaviors in times of psychological distress and perceived barriers to seeking professional help. The results demonstrate that most respondents rely on informal means of seeking help whereas mental health and medical servi...
This study investigates the consequences of Asian women's intermarriage—whether it is associated with higher social standing and lower ethnic identity, using data on Asian women (N = 589) from the National Latino and Asian American Survey (NLAAS). The socioeconomic status of partners of women who intermarried and partners of women who married men o...
This study re-examines the healthy migrant phenomenon in China's internal migration process and investigates the different trajectories of place of origin on migrants' self-rated physical health and psychological distress. Data came from a household survey (N = 1474) conducted in Beijing between May and October in 2009. Multiple regression techniqu...
This study analyzes the employment patterns of current and former welfare recipients over a 6-year period to examine who works in temporary jobs, the dynamics of temping, and the training and links to regular jobs that temping provides. It also compares the long-term employment outcomes of temps with those of direct-hire employees. Results suggest...
We examined the association between perceived discrimination and use of mental health services among a national sample of Asian Americans.
Our data came from the National Latino and Asian American Study, the first national survey of Asian Americans. Our sample included 600 Chinese, 508 Filipinos, 520 Vietnamese, and 467 other Asians (n=2095). We us...
We investigate the association between a subjective measure of social status and the reasons for immigration among Asian immigrants in the U.S. We use data from the National Latino and Asian American Study to test several hypotheses about this association. Our analyses show the positive effect on perceived social standing of migrating for better ed...
Since its introduction in the 1980s, China's housing privatization reform has gradually transformed urban residents into private homeowners, and reinforced disparities in housing allocation and living conditions. Various studies have analyzed the mobilization of private homeowners in newly built, upscale apartment complexes. Using data from field o...
We examined whether self-reported everyday discrimination was associated with chronic health conditions among a nationally representative sample of Asian Americans.
Data were from the Asian American subsample (n = 2095) of the National Latino and Asian American Study conducted in 2002 and 2003. Regression techniques (negative binomial and logistic)...
Growing research finds that reports of discrimination are associated with mental health. However, many US studies are focused on regional samples and do not control for important confounders such as other stressors and response factors. The present study examines the association between self-reported racial discrimination and DSM-IV defined mental...
We examined whether perceived unfair treatment is associated with health conditions, whether social support moderates this association, and whether such relationships differ by location.
Data were derived from the 1998-1999 Filipino American Community Epidemiological Study, a cross-sectional investigation of 2241 Filipino Americans living in San Fr...
We examined the association between discrimination and mental health service use among a representative sample of Chinese Americans.
Our data were derived from the 2-wave Chinese American Psychiatric Epidemiological Survey, a strata-cluster survey conducted in 1993 and 1994 in a western American city.
Language-based discrimination was associated wi...