Self-abandonment or seeking an alternative way out: understanding Chinese rural migrant children’s resistance to schooling

Abstract

This study explores the complexity of school resistance by Chinese rural migrant children (RMC), which may contribute to their educational failure, as well as the school conditions informing their resistance. This study categorizes migrant children’s school resistance into three patterns, based on their rationale for school behaviors: conformist learner, education abandoner, and nascent transformative resister. All three groups were initially believers in pursuing academic success for upward social mobility, as promoted at school. However, some gradually determined such educational pursuit was untenable and became education abandoners. Teachers’ predicting RMC’s academic failure and highlighting the individual’s responsibility for that failure contributed to that abandonment. While findings of this study indicate that migrant children may develop transformative resistance, this possibility is challenged by the dominant ideology of meritocracy and a teaching agenda that legitimizes social inequality.

Keywords:

• Rural migrant children
• student resistance
• educational failure
• schooling
• China

Disclosure statement

There is no potential conflict of interests reported by the author.

Notes

1 Rural migrant workers (waichu nongmin gong 外出农民工) are defined as rural laborers who work and live in areas outside the towns or townships of their residential registration for a period longer than six months.

2 The hukou (household registration 户口) system divides China’s population into two identities, peasants, and urban dwellers, generating the rural-urban segregation in public goods provision in China (Lin 2006).

3 In China, Senior Secondary School Entrance Examination (zhongkao 中考) tracks students to ordinary or vocational high schools. Only ordinary ones are the academic track leading towards tertiary education. RMC in such megacities as Beijing can only attend vocational high schools if they choose to stay in Beijing after compulsory education; otherwise, they need to go back to the hometown for high schools.

4 To enrol in public schools in Beijing at compulsory education, migrant parents are required to submit ‘five certificates’ (fuzheng 五证) for their children, including (1) temporary residence permit; (2) household registration booklet; (3) proof of parental employment; (4) proof of residency; and (5) certificate verifying a lack of guardianship in the place of origin.

5 District education committees allocate funds for public schools primarily based on the number of students, teachers, and school activities, and school performance, not on whether it enrols migrant children. Despite relative differences across schools and districts, public schools have a generally higher quality of education, in terms of the school facility, teacher qualification, and school activities, than most (if not all) private migrant schools.

6 In China, first grade commonly begins at six years of age. However, some migrant children in this study were one or two years older than their counterparts because of late school enrolment or frequent school transfers.

7 Each student interview started with a warming-up session (10 minutes for an individual ­interview, 15–20 minutes for group interview) for the student(s) to introduce family ­members, hobbies, favourite teachers, academic performance, and their future dream.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Peak Discipline Construction Project of Education at East China Normal University; and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation under Grant [number 2018M640356].