The state of class consciousness of working-class children in China has received scant attention in the scholarly literature. This study examines the class consciousness of rural migrant children as they are about to join their migrant parents and become “China's new workers.” Qualitative investigations were conducted in two primary schools in Beijing. Focus group and individual interviews were held with 87 fifth- and sixth-grade migrant children in the two case schools and 324 valid student questionnaires were collected. The findings reveal that migrant children are aware of the unequal class relationships suffered by migrant workers; however, their interpretations of class-based injustices exhibit false consciousness, shadowed by individualism, meritocracy and the duality of images. Family and school may play vital roles in shaping migrant children's class consciousness.

This paper examines the impact of rural–urban migration on primary school-age migrant girls in China, providing important data on this unexplored group as well as drawing several larger conclusions about the evolving relationship between migration and women's autonomy. Much recent literature has focused on Chinese young unmarried women migrants. However, there has been no attempt to distinguish the effect of migration on children by gender, and little research on the “new generation” of married women migrants. This paper focuses on two aspects of migrant girls' well-being, education and migration satisfaction, and compares girls' assessments with those of their parents, particularly their mothers. It analyses differences between the views of both girls and parents, arguing that specific parental concerns about daughters shape girls' futures in ways that do not apply to migrant boys. A further, broader, implication of this analysis is that certain benefits of migration, previously thought to apply exclusively to single women, extend also to married women, influencing mothers when forming goals for their daughters' futures.