Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-kw2vx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-14T16:03:35.488Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Broken Ladder: Why Education Provides No Upward Mobility for Migrant Children in China*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2015

Yihan Xiong
Yihan Xiong*
Affiliation:
Fudan University, China. E-mail: xiongyihan@fudan.edu.cn.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper attempts to explain why education fails to facilitate upward mobility for migrant children in China. By comparing a public school and a private migrant school in Shanghai, two mechanisms are found to underpin the reproduction of the class system: the ceiling effect, which is at work in public schools, and the counter-school culture, which prevails in private migrant schools. Both mechanisms might be understood as adaptations to the external circumstances of – and institutional discrimination against – migrants rather than as resistance to the prevailing institutional systems. Thus, the functioning of these mechanisms further strengthens the inequality embodied in the system.

摘要

本文试图解释为什么中国的教育无法为农民工子女提供向上流动的机会。通过比较上海的一所公办学校和农民工子弟学校, 作者发现了两种不同的阶级再生产机制: 一是存在于公办学校的天花板效应, 二是盛行于农民工子弟学校的反学校文化。这两种机制与其说是农民工子女对主流制度体系的反抗, 不如说是对外部环境和制度性歧视的适应。这些机制的存在进一步强化了嵌入在制度体系中不平等。

Keywords

class reproductionsocial mobilityinstitutional discriminationceiling effectmigrant educationChinacounter-school culture阶级再生产社会流动制度性歧视天花板效应反学校文化
Type
Articles
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 221 , March 2015 , pp. 161 - 184
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Research for this article is funded by the National Social Science Foundation of China (No.10CZZ005) and a grant (No.A1223) from the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission. The author gratefully acknowledges helpful advice, comments and support from Zhijun Zang, Jane Mansbridge, Lei Guang, Dorothy Solinger, Shiping Tang, Zhiguo Xiao, Yongyan Zheng, Hui Li, Xiaoyan Guo, Adam Tyner, Minhua Ling, Lisa Yiu, Tamara Jacka, June Teufel Dreyer, Pei-Chia Lan, ZhiyuanYu, Keng Shu, Jing Li and Fangsheng Zhu.

References

Ball, Stephen J. 1993. “Education markets, choice and social class: the market as a class strategy in the UK and the USA.” British Journal of Sociology of Education 14, 3–19.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Basil. 1975. Class, Codes, and Control. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre, and Passeron, Jean-Claude. 1990. Reproduction in Education, Society, and Culture. London: Sage.Google Scholar
Bowles, Samuel, and Gintis, Herbert. 1976. Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Breen, Richard, and Jonsson, Jan O.. 2005. “Inequality of opportunity in comparative perspective: recent research on educational attainment and social mobility.” Annual Review of Sociology 31, 223–244.Google Scholar
Chan, Kam Wing. 1994. Cities with Invisible Walls. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Chan, Kam Wing, and Zhang, Li. 1999. “The hukou system and rural–urban migration in China: processes and changes.” The China Quarterly 160, 831–840.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, Yuanyuan, and Feng, Shuaizhang. 2013. “Access to public schools and the education of migrant children in China.” China Economic Review 26, 75–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cheng, Henan. 2010. “Educational Barriers for Migrant Children in China: A Mixed-methods Analysis Focused on Ethnic Minorities.” Ph.D. diss., Columbia University.Google Scholar
Cheng, Tie-jun, and Selden, Mark. 1994. “The origins and social consequences of China's hukou system.” The China Quarterly 139, 644–668.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coleman, James S. 1966. Equality of Educational Opportunity. Washington, DC: US Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Office of Education.Google Scholar
Collins, James. 2009. “Social reproduction in classrooms and schools.” Annual Review of Anthropology 38, 33–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DiMaggio, Paul. 1982. “Cultural capital and school success.” American Sociological Review 47, 189–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fang, Lai, Liu, Chengfang, Luo, Renfu, Zhang, Linxiu, Ma, Xiaochen, Bai, Yujie, Sharbono, Brian and Rozelle, Scott. 2011. “Private migrant schools or rural/urban public schools: where should China educate its migrant children?” REAP Working Paper No. 224, Rural Education Action Project, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Feng, Deng. 2010. “Moving for Opportunities? Examining the Public School Attendance and Reading Achievement of Migrant Students in Beijing.” Ph.D. diss., The University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Goodburn, Charlotte. 2009. “Learning from migrant education: a case study of the schooling of rural migrant children in Beijing.” International Journal of Educational Development 29(5), 495–504.Google Scholar
Guang, Lei, and Zheng, Lu. 2005. “Migration as the second-best option: local power and off-farm employment.” The China Quarterly 181, 22–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guo, Jing. 2007. “Migrant Children School Performance in China: A Pilot Study in Beijing.” Ph.D. diss., University of California at Berkeley.Google Scholar
Jin, Xiaoyi, Feldman, Marcus W., Li, Shuzhuo and Du, Haifeng. 2006. “Complexity of rural–urban migrants' social networks in China: a quantitative study in Shenzhen,” http://www.researchgate.net/publication/268033172_Complexity_of_Rural-Urban_Migrants%27_Social_Networks_in_China_A_Quantitative_Study_in_Shenzhen_1. Accessed 7 January 2015.Google Scholar
King, Gary, Keohane, Robert and Verba, Sidney. 1996. Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Lan, Pei-Chia. 2014. “Segmented incorporation: the second generation of rural migrants in urban China.” The China Quarterly 216, 1–23.Google Scholar
Lareau, Annette. 2003. Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race and Family Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Lenski, Gerhard E. 1966. Power and Privilege: A Theory of Social Stratification. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Ling, Minhua. 2012. “City Cowherds: Migrant Youth Coming of Age in Urban China.” Ph.D. diss., Yale University.Google Scholar
McLaren, Peter. 2006. Life in Schools: An Introduction to Critical Pedagogy in the Foundations of Education (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.Google Scholar
Meyer, John W. 1977. “The effects of education as an institution.” American Journal of Sociology 83(1), 55–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ming, Holly Ho. 2009. “Growing Up in the Urban Shadow: Realities and Dreams of Migrant Workers' Children in Beijing and Shanghai.” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University.Google Scholar
Ogbu, John U. 1978. Minority Education and Caste: The American System in Cross-cultural Perspective. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Papagiannis, George J., Bickel, Robert N. and Fuller, Richard H.. 1983. “The social creation of school dropouts: accomplishing the reproduction of an underclass.” Youth and Society 14(3), 363–392.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Qiu, Yijiao. 2010. “Blooming flower,” China Daily, 1 June.Google Scholar
Ross, Heidi. 2007. “Policy as practice, agency as voice, research as intervention: imag(in)g girls' education in China.” In Ann Maslak, Mary (ed.), The Agency and Structure of Female Education. New York: SUNY Press, 233–252.Google Scholar
Shavit, Yossi, and Blossfeld, Hans-Peter (eds.). 1993. Persistent Inequalities: A Comparative Study of Educational Attainment in Thirteen Countries. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Simpson, Richard L. 1962. “Parental influence anticipatory socialization, and social mobility.” American Sociological Review 27(4), 517–522.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Solinger, Dorothy J. 1999. Contesting Citizenship in Urban China: Peasant Migrants, the State, and the Logic of the Market. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tang, Shiping. 2010. “The positional market and economic growth.” Journal of Economic Issues 44(4), 915–942.Google Scholar
Tzanakis, Michael. 2011. “Bourdieu's social reproduction thesis and the role of cultural capital in educational attainment: a critical review of key empirical studies.” Educate~The Journal of Doctoral Research in Education 11(1), 76–90.Google Scholar
Van de Werfhorst, Herman G., and Mijs, Jonathan J.B.. 2010. “Achievement inequality and the institutional structure of educational systems: a comparative perspective.” The Annual Review of Sociology 36, 407–428.Google Scholar
Wang, Lihua, and Holland, Tracey. 2011. “In search of educational equity for the migrant children of Shanghai.” Comparative Education 47(4), 471–487.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wang, Lu. 2006. “The urban Chinese educational system and the marginality of migrant children.” In Fong, V.L. and Murphy, Rachel (eds.), Chinese Citizenship: Views from the Margins. London: Routledge, 27–40.Google Scholar
Wang, Lu. 2008. “The marginality of migrant children in the urban Chinese educational system.” British Journal of Sociology of Education 29(6), 691–703.Google Scholar
Wang, Yijie, and Xing, Tong. 2004. “Liudong nongmin shehui zhichiwang tanxi” (Analysis of the social support network of rural migrants). Sociology Studies 2, 42–48.Google Scholar
Willis, Paul E. 1981. Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Woronov, T. E. 2011. “Learning to serve: urban youth, vocational schools and new class formations in China.” The China Journal 66, 77–99.Google Scholar
Xiong, Yihan. 2010. Chengshihu de haizi: nongmingong zinü de shenfen shengchan yu zhengzhi shehuihua (Urbanized Children: Identity Production and Political Socialization of Migrant Children in Contemporary China). Shanghai: People's Publishing House.Google Scholar
Yi, Lin. 2011. “Turning rurality into modernity: suzhi education in a suburban public school of migrant children in Xiamen.” The China Quarterly 206, 313–329.Google Scholar
Zhang, Yulin. 2005. “Zhongguo jiaoyu: bupingdeng de kuozhang jiqi dongli” (China's education: inequality expansion and its driving force). The 21st Century (web edition) May.Google Scholar
Zhou, Qunli, and Lu, Ming. 2009. “Bainian yu zexiao” (New year networking and school choice). Shijie jingji wenhui 6, 19–34.Google Scholar