Lonely, but Not Alone: Qualitative Study among Immigrant and Native-Born Adolescents

Katrine Rich Madsen, Tine Tjørnhøj-Thomsen, Signe Smith Jervelund, Pamela Qualter and Bjørn E. Holstein
Additional contact information
Katrine Rich Madsen: The National Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, 5230 Odense, Denmark
Tine Tjørnhøj-Thomsen: The National Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, 5230 Odense, Denmark
Signe Smith Jervelund: Section for Health Services Research, Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, 1014 Copenhagen, Denmark
Pamela Qualter: Manchester Institute of Education, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK
Bjørn E. Holstein: The National Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, 5230 Odense, Denmark

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 21, 1-16

Abstract: This paper explores loneliness as it is understood and experienced by adolescents, with a special focus on the importance of their migration status. We recruited students from five schools following a maximum variation sampling scheme, and we conducted 15 semi-structured, individual interviews with eighth-grade adolescents (aged 14–15 years) that were immigrants, descendants, and with a Danish majority background. A thematic analysis was applied with a special focus on differences and similarities in understanding and experiencing loneliness between adolescents with diverse migration status. The results showed more similarities than differences in loneliness. Generally, loneliness was described as an adverse feeling, varying in intensity and duration, and participants referenced distressing emotions. Feeling lonely was distinguished from being alone and characterized as an invisible social stigma. A variety of perceived social deficiencies were emphasized as causing loneliness, emerging in the interrelation between characteristics of the individual and their social context. The results add to the current literature by highlighting that it is not the presence of specific individual characteristics that causes loneliness; instead, loneliness is dependent on the social contexts the individual is embedded in. Differences across migration status were few and related to variations in the adolescents’ individual characteristics. The findings highlight the importance of (1) studying the characteristics of both the individual and the social context in research on the antecedents to adolescents’ loneliness, and (2) applying this perspective in other studies on the importance of migration status.

Keywords: loneliness; adolescence; qualitative methods; ethnicity; immigration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/21/11425/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/21/11425/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:21:p:11425-:d:668654

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().