Aspirational ambivalence of middle-class secondary students in Hong Kong

Abstract

The research explores Hong Kong students’ dispositions towards higher education and employment in relation to understandings of their schooling experiences in English Medium of Instruction (EMI) schools in Hong Kong. The research draws upon Bourdieu’s theory of practice, Appadurai’s notion of the ‘capacity to aspire’, and Taylor’s concept of ‘social imaginary’, to help make sense of students’ aspirations for the future. Data included observation notes and interview transcripts with members of six focus groups across three distinctive schools in Hong Kong. Analytically, the research shows how aspirational dispositions and logics formed through specific configurations of the broader cultural and social milieu of Hong Kong, middle-class familial practices, non-elite EMI schooling experiences, and the place of English in Hong Kong, were complicit in fostering a sense of ambivalence about the future for these students.

Keywords:

• Aspirations
• future imaginary
• capacity to aspire
• Bourdieu
• English as Medium of Instruction (EMI) Schooling

Notes

1. The Gini Coefficient Index is a measure of the distribution of income or consumption expenditure among individuals or households within an economy that deviates from a perfectly equal distribution, with 0 being perfect equality and 100 being perfect inequality.

2. In September 2014, Hong Kong witnessed an unprecedentedly large number of protests over the decision by China’s Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress to disallow civil nominations for electoral candidates to the Chief Executive position before general public voting. This resulted in mass civil disobedience and sit-in protests, and roused political activism amongst Hong Kong’s youth – a demographic which was previously considered apolitical.

3. As middle-class Australian citizens, one (Author 1) of whom has Taiwanese heritage, and lives in Hong Kong, and two (Authors 2 and 3) of whom are native-English speakers of varied European heritage and live in Australia, we are aware of the complexities that attend our analyses of EMI schooling in a post-colonial context such as Hong Kong.