Highlighting the changing landscape of Chinese urban state schools under the pressure of recruiting a tremendous number of migrant children, this book examines the quality of state educational provisions from demographic, institutional, familial and cultural angles. Rooted in rich qualitative data from five Chinese metropolitan cities, it identifies the demographic changes in many state schools of becoming ‘migrant majority’ and the institutional reformation of ‘interim quasi-state’ schools under a low cost and inferior schooling approach. This book also digs into the ‘black box’ of cultural reproduction in school and family processes, revealing both a gloomy side of many migrant children’s academic underachievement as a result of troubled home-school relations and a bright side that social inclusion of migrant children in state school promotes their adaptation to urban life. The author concludes that migrant children’s experiences in state (and quasi-state) schools turn them into a generation of ‘new urban working-class’. The monograph will be of interest to scholars, students, practitioners and policymakers who want to better understand educational equality for migrants and other marginalised groups.

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.

This dissertation is designed to learn lessons from China's experiences of seeking to solve the migrant children's education issue, specifically, the city public school enrollment issue. In China, access to public schools is the main channel for migrant children to be well educated. With the hope to inspire education policy makers and researchers on solving this issue, it is important to find out how the central and local governments work out proper policies to ensure equal compulsory education for migrant children. Qualitative research methods including content analysis and historical analysis are deployed in this dissertation to review related policy documents for education, compulsory education, and migrant children school enrollment in China since 1981. Foucault's theory of power helps to understand the complexity of the migrant children education issue in China. This dissertation first discerns the causes of the issue, Hukou, the permanent residential registration system and tax-sharing system in China. Through reviewing the policy toward migrant children education, the study reveals the guiding role of the central government and the efforts and the challenges from local governments in solving the issue. Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Changzhou provide four models to learn about experiences tackling the migrant children public school enrollment issue at the local level. As a reference for education researchers and policy makers, a recommended model is developed that argues the central government and local government should be the policy makers to develop the education standards of school, curriculum and teachers to ensure quality education for migrant children. Additionally, the local governments should be responsible for mobilizing all social sectors to get involved in solving the issue in migrant children's education issue, including private sectors and non-governmental organization.

​Winner of the AERA Division B Outstanding Book Recognition Award This book examines the dynamics surrounding the education of children in the unofficial schools in China’s urban migrant communities. This ethnographic study focuses on both the complex structural factors impacting the education of children attending unofficial migrant children schools and the personal experiences of individuals working within these communities. As the book illustrates in careful detail, the migrant children schools serve a critical function in the community by serving as a hub for organized collective action around shared grievances related to issues of education, employment, wellbeing, and other social rights. In turn, the development of a collective identity among teachers, students, parents, and other members in the migrant communities makes it possible for activists to begin to working to address multiple forms of discrimination and maltreatment while simultaneously moving towards the possibility of more profound social transformation.

This book investigates the implementation of the education policy for migrant children, arguing that it has been selectively implemented: while some policy themes have been effectively implemented, others have not. Four factors underlie this selective implementation: specificity of policy goals, funding for education, local incentives in an exam-oriented education system, and intergroup relationships between migrant and urban children.

This thesis aims to examine the extent to which migrant children's education policy is implemented and identifies the factors that affect the implementation of this policy in the Chinese context. In the last two decades, urban China has witnessed a rapid increase in the number of children of rural-urban migrants. It has become a public concern that migrant children do not have access to education and cannot receive as good an education as do urban children in the cities, even though there are policies formulated by the central government to tackle this issue. The thesis adopts mixed research methods to examine the implementation of migrant children's education policy. Main sources of the evidence include semi-structured interviews, statistical data, government documents and internal reports by local schools. The thesis divides migrant children's education policy into three parts: funding and school access policy, equal opportunity policy and school support and social integration policy. It is found that policies for migrant children are selectively or partially implemented. Some policy goals have been achieved, while others have not. Certain groups of migrant children have access to urban public schools and receive high quality education while others do not. A policy analysis shows that migrant children's education policy is ambiguous in goals and weak in incentives, which grants local governments and schools scope to act with discretion. Non-implementation of sufficient funding and school access policy result from self-interested and habitual decisions of local governments. Implementation of equal opportunity policy is affected by the workings of the exam-oriented education system in China. Social integration policy appears to be well-implemented due to effective school support available to migrant children and good intergroup relationship between migrant and urban children. The findings imply that further policy reform is needed to improve the educational opportunities of migrant children. In particular, special attention should be focused on those policy areas not effectively implemented and more support should be directed to those migrant children who are more disadvantaged.

This research examines the dynamics surrounding the education of children in the unofficial schools in China's urban migrant communities. Social movement theories provide the major critical lenses for analyzing the politics, practices, and possibilities of these migrant children schools. As part of this research, ethnographic research methods were used to complete a fourteen-month, multi-sited study, including in-depth interviews and participant observations at homes, schools, and community sites with migrant children, their parents and teachers who are working in these migrant children schools. Additionally, several social activists who are deeply involved in providing resources and support for these communities in the face of growing scrutiny from the state were also interviewed. In addition to extensive archival research on population migration and state responses to changing educational needs over the past thirty years, the study was conducted in five different migrant communities in and around Beijing. The research reveals that these schools have provided education to children from the marginalized migrant families when the government had failed to do so. The lack of the political willingness from the government to address the welfare of rural migrants had denied migrant children the access to public education. The emergence of migrant children schools filled this gap by providing initial education for children from poor and marginalized migrant communities. They also provided the space and possibilities of bringing together migrants from all regions and ethnic backgrounds across the country and supporting each other as they share grievances related to their job, education, health and other social rights in the city. This bond has connected individuals who are not necessarily related through the kinship or place of origin related network, but joined by their shared experiences of living and working in the marginalized environment. The development of such collective identity among teachers, students, parents, and other members in the migrant communities makes it possible for them to begin to address the social discrimination and maltreatment of migrant children, as well as moving towards the possibility of more profound social transformation.