The contributors to this volume explore the close relationship between education and the molding of modern immigrant societies through case studies of either Asian migrants or Asian immigrant societies. This volume will be especially useful for researchers, educators, and students intent on understanding some of the critical challenges faced by a globalizing world.

This edited book explores the complex and multifaceted connections between education and migration in an Asian context from multiple perspectives. It features studies from China, Japan, India, the Philippines, Thailand, and Timor-Leste and covers diverse migration and education experiences. These experiences encompass internal and international migration and forced displacement, as well as questions surrounding education such as school choice, education provision and training as human capital; education and social inclusion; and student performance in a post-conflict context. By covering a wide range of questions and situations, the original scholarship in this book reveals how human development concerns and higher rates of movement within and outside of Asian countries operate on multiple levels in a globalized world.

There are more than 225 million rural-to-urban migrant workers, and some 20 million migrant children in Chinese cities. Because of policies related to the household registration (hukou) system, migrant students are not allowed a public high school education in the cities, so their urban education stops abruptly at the end of middle school. This book investigates the post-middle school education and labor market decisions of migrant students in Beijing and Shanghai, and provides a glimpse into the future of a crucial link in China’s development. The stories of how these migrant students seek upward mobility and urban citizenship also reveal one of the most intricate structural inequalities in China today. Based on quantitative data collected from middle schools in Beijing and Shanghai, and ethnographic data drawing on in-depth interviews with migrant children, their parents, and teachers, this book offers a portrait of the migration and educational experiences and prospects of second generation migrant youth in China today. It explores the urban experience of migrant students, contrasting it with that of local city youngsters, examining the migrant students’ family backgrounds, family dynamics, neighborhood and school experience, and interaction with locals. It goes on to look at the migrant students’ education and career aspirations, the structural obstacles preventing their fulfilment, and how migrant families respond to institutional constraints on educational opportunity. Finally, the book concludes with a discussion of policy implications and offers proposals for resolving the dilemmas of migrant youth. This book will of great interest to students and scholars of Chinese studies, Asian education, migration and social development.

Asian migration and mobilities are transforming education cultures in the Anglosphere, prompting mounting debates about ‘tiger mothers’ and ‘dragon children’, and competition and segregation in Anglosphere schools. This book challenges the cultural essentialism which prevails in much academic and popular discussion of ‘Asian success’ and in relation to Asian education mobilities. As anxiety and aspiration within these spaces are increasingly ethnicised, the children of Asian migrants are both admired and resented for their educational success. This book explores popular perceptions of Asian migrant families through in-depth empirically informed accounts on the broader economic, social, historical and geo-political contexts within which education cultures are produced. This includes contributions from academics on global markets and national policies around migration and education, classed trajectories and articulations, local formations of ‘ethnic capital’, and transnational assemblages that produce education and mobility as means for social advancement. At a time when our schooling systems and communities are undergoing rapid transformations as a result of increasing global mobility, this book is a unique and important contribution to an issue of pressing significance. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

The study of the overseas Chinese has by now become a global enterprise, raising new theoretical problems and empirical challenges. New case studies of overseas Chinese, such as those on communities in North America, Cuba, India and South Africa, continually unveil different perspectives. New kinds of transnational connectivities linking Chinese communities are also being identified. It is now possible to make broader generalizations of a Chinese diaspora, on a global basis. Further, the intensifying study of the overseas Chinese has stimulated renewed intellectual vigor in other areas of research. The transnational and transregional activities of overseas Chinese, for example, pose serious challenges to analytical concepts of regional divides such as that between East and Southeast Asia.

This novel contribution examines the lived experiences of migrants in education in various international contexts, exploring common school system features that promote students’ inclusion and challenge their exclusion. With a range of international contributions and case studies from Canada, the US, Hong Kong, Japan and Europe, the book offers critical, theoretically innovative understandings examining national policies and practices to develop reforms, focusing on agency, heterogeneity and systems of relational spaces for migrant youth. Chapters engage with discussions around differentiated needs of marginalised and vulnerable groups, as well as the importance of superdiversity in studying and developing inclusive systems for migrant youth in education. Offering unique insights, the book outlines a framework for the promotion of inclusive school systems that ultimately look to create quality learning environments that prevent discrimination, and support students’ holistic needs. It will be of great interest to researchers, academics and postgraduate students in the fields of sociology of education, philosophy of education, psychology of education, teacher education and social policy.