Ethnicity, temporality and educational mobilities: comparing the ethnic identity constructions of Mongolian and Tibetan students in China

Abstract

This article explores the impact of educational mobilities on the ethnic identity construction of minority students in China. Adopting ‘temporality’ as an analytical tool, the article highlights the dynamic temporal multiplicity in ethnic identity construction by comparing longitudinal in-depth interviews of a Mongolian student and a Tibetan student. This multiplicity of temporality is manifested in three aspects: temporality of ethnic othering; temporality of ethnic identity awakening; and temporality of ‘worldly time’ and ‘ethnic time’. Both ‘worldly time’ and ‘ethnic time’ entail distinctive understandings about these students’ pace and priorities in life. Both students defer their ‘permanent’ ethnic identity to an imagined future. Yet, adopting the gaze of the dominant others, both students subconsciously constructed an essentialist view of their ethnic cultures as fixed and stable, and those of the dominant cultures as alive and fluid. This article enriches our understanding of the politics of subjectivation through the lens of ‘temporality’.

Keywords:

• Mobility
• ethnicity
• temporality
• Tibetan
• Mongolian
• China

Notes

Acknowledgements

Both authors want to thank Professor Lin Yi, Professor David Gillborn, and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback on earlier drafts. They also acknowledge Guoxiang and Dolkar for generously sharing their experiences.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Tibetan and Uyghur groups are among the 55 officially recognised ethnic minority groups in China, a country that is dominated by Han, the majority ethnic group.

2 Microblogging, the Chinese version of Twitter.

3 While Dolkar moved to study at inland schools since age 12, Guoxiang was educated in a Han-language school in Inner Mongolia before entering university.

4 The National College Entrance Examination.

5 At the time of writing, Dolkar has been away from home for around 11 years. According to Wang and Zhou (2003), it usually takes around 11–12 years for Tibetan students to complete their neidi study experience up to college education.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Social Science Fund [Grant 18CSH011], [Grant 15CSH039].