Support or Strain? Transnational Social Ties and Deviant Behaviors Among Multicultural Adolescents in South Korea

Despite the increasing population of multicultural adolescents in Korea with foreign-born parents, research into their deviant behavior, particularly in relation to transnational ties with their mothers’ home countries, remains limited. Addressing this gap, our study investigated the impact of such ties on multicultural adolescents’ deviant behaviors. Utilizing waves 7–9 of the Multicultural Adolescent Panel Survey (N = 1,193, n = 3,330), we employed a hybrid random effects negative binomial regression to assess both between-individual effects and within-individual changes over time. Our main independent variable was adolescents’ transnational social ties with their mother’s home countries, encompassing both outbound ties (adolescent’s visit to the mother’s home country) and inbound ties (visits by grandparents or relatives from the mother’s home country). We found that transnational ties with the mother’s home country were more likely to induce stress than provide support for adolescents. Specifically, multicultural adolescents with transnational ties through visits from grandparents or relatives from their mother’s home country to Korea exhibited a higher propensity for deviant behaviors compared to those without such ties. Moreover, these transnational visits exacerbated the risk of delinquency over time. We did not find any moderating effect of self-esteem on the relationship between transnational ties and deviant behaviors. Our findings underscore the importance of fostering a social environment that embraces multicultural families as integral members of Korean society.