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.

​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.

Contributing to the shaping of education and migration as a distinct field of research, this forward-looking Research Handbook explores cross-cutting questions on the range of challenges facing education systems, migrant children and students today.

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.

By concentrating on the topic of school enrolment policy for rural-to-urban migrant children in China, this book analyses the unequal power relations and structural inequalities that can appear in the context of education. The author complements current knowledge by applying theoretical resources of policy sociology, in particular the thinking of Pierre Bourdieu, into analysis of educational policymaking in the Chinese context. He takes a policy trajectory approach to trace the (unequal) power relations and structural inequalities invested and realised in the school enrolment policy. Rooted in rich qualitative data from five metropolises, he examines both external influences of politics, economy and public policy on educational policy agenda setting and discursive practices within the educational policy cycle, inherent in the post-2013 restrictive school enrolment policy. Structural constraints and agency in the local context are also explored, indicating that the intersectional effects of political, economic, and civic logic can result in differentiated modes of policy enactment. The study will be of interest to scholars, students, policymakers and practitioners in helping address policymaking and social justice in education for migrants and other marginalised groups.

Providing a cornerstone to the global debate on equity and inclusion within education, this handbook explores equity issues pertaining to poverty and social class, race, ethnicity, sociocultural, sociolinguistic exclusion in education and recognises intersectionality and gender across these dimensions. This carefully curated collection of essays written by international experts promotes inclusive systems in education that explicitly recognise the voices of learners who may be at risk of marginalisation, exclusion or underachievement. Developing a multilayered innovative conceptual framework involving spatial, emotional-relational and dialogical 'turns' for education, it emphasises key system points for reform, including building strategic bridges between health and education for vulnerable groups and shifts in focus for initial teacher education and the wider curriculum. The handbook is organised into the following key parts: Theoretical Frameworks Funding Models and Structures for Equity and Inclusive Systems Exclusion and Discrimination Bridging Health and Education Agency and Empowerment Outreach and Engagement The Routledge International Handbook of Equity and Inclusion in Education will be of great value to academics operating in the areas of education, psychology, sociology, social policy, ethnography, cultural studies; researchers in university research centres and in policy institutes pertaining to education, poverty, social inclusion as well as international organisations involved with inclusion in education.