This paper analyses rural migrant children's access to public schools in urban China, focusing on the implications of the recent introduction of points systems for apportioning school places. This approach, first piloted by Zhongshan city in Guangdong province from 2009, has steadily been extended nationwide. Here, we analyse the reasons for its spread and for divergence in its implementation in various urban districts. Notwithstanding rhetorical claims that points systems promote “fairness” or “equality” in the treatment of migrants, our analysis suggests that they maintain or even exacerbate the stratification of urban society, lending new legitimation to the hierarchical differentiation of entitlements. This is consistent with the aim of the 2014 “New national urbanization plan” to divert urban growth from megacities towards smaller cities. However, we argue that the use of points systems should also be seen in the context of an evolving bureaucratic-ideological project aimed at more rigorously monitoring and assessing China's entire population, invoking the logic of meritocracy for the purpose of control.

This article explores the discursive functioning of education policies, bringing into consideration community perspectives regarding policy enactment in contemporary China. With the intention of building upon ongoing discussions surrounding both the conceptions and purposes of policy sociology, we critically analyse policies directly related to the education of migrant children living in and around China's largest urban centres, with a specific focus on those implemented in Beijing. We emphasize two important aspects that previous studies of China's education policies have tended to underplay given their focus on social-economic perspectives. The first argument is that education policies have an underlying agenda that extends beyond that of simply addressing the educational needs of migrant children – evidenced through the discursive functions of policy texts. The second argument is related and seeks to raise questions about who is best served by these policies and for whom these policies are intended.

To promote a prosocial conscience and behaviour, gratitude education has long been perceived as an effective intervention in formal schooling. Built upon the Foucauldian account of the mutually constitutive relationship between knowledge and power, this paper investigates how an urban school for largely poor and low-income children of migrant workers in Beijing constructed and transmitted knowledge and discourses on gratitude. The authors argue that the students are positioned as what we term “morally captive guests”1 who possess an inferior position in the moral life compared to urbanites, and who are perceived as an instrument for attracting resources and attention to the lower-ranked school. This schooling reproduces extant class relations, whereas the student resistance questions practices of graduating citizenship and educational inequalities.

This article uses a case study to analyse the fissures between human rights advocates and NGO practitioners. Since 2009, the Open Constitution Initiative, an organization run by human rights advocates, has been campaigning for migrant children's right to attend local schools. While fragmented resistance on the same issue has long existed in activities organized by migrant community NGOs, there has been almost no cooperation between the two parties during the campaign. Based on ethnographic research, I elaborate on how these two groups of activists differ in their strategies and goals, and how their choices are related to their understanding of political struggle and political transformation. I contend that this case provides a new lens through which to view the recent decline in some human rights activism in China, and illustrates the importance of investigating the internal structure of civil society.

Between 1947 and 1953, Australia received over 170,000 Displaced People from Europe including widows and unmarried mothers. These refugees were expected to conform to the policies and expectations of the State, in particular the adherence to a 2-year work contract. This was an impossibility for many mothers who could not find work or accommodation outside of the government supplied migrant accommodation centres, and who, as a consequence, resorted to placing their children, either temporarily or permanently, in institutions or for adoption. Through an examination of archival documents, this paper examines the policies that resulted in migrant child placement and adoption and considers the role played by Department of Immigration social workers. It asks why, when migrant children were considered amongst the most desirable of new arrivals, were many fated to become orphans?

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.

Case report data and a matched case-control study were used to investigate the epidemiological characteristics of hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) in children in Shenzhen, China between 2008 and 2011. Multivariate analyses were used to evaluate factors associated with severity of infection. Laboratory tests were performed to determine aetiological identification for samples from 163 severe and fatal cases as well as an outpatient-based HFMD sentinel surveillance system (n = 446). All identified EV71 belonged to sub-genotype C4a. No major changes in the CA16 and EV71 viruses were found until the end of 2011. Annual attack rates and the case-severity ratios (CSRs) rose from 0·82/1000 and 0·56/1000, respectively, in 2008 to 2·12/1000 and 6·13/1000 in 2011. The CSR was higher in migrants than in local residents. The adjusted odds ratio (OR) of having a severe attack for being a migrant was 2·45, having a fever >39°C (OR 5·77), visiting a private clinic (OR 2·65), longer time from symptom onset to diagnosis (OR 1·49), visiting a doctor (OR 1·51), early use of intramuscular pyrazolone (OR 3·36), early use of intravenous glucocorticoids (OR 2·28), or the combination of both (OR 3·75). The mortality and increasing case severity appears to be associated with socioeconomic factors including migration and is of worldwide concern.