Learning to be safe citizens: state-run boarding schools and the dynamics of Tibetan identity

Abstract

Drawing on individual interviews with graduates of the state-run boarding program in the Chinese heartland called ‘inland Tibet classes’ (ITC), this paper examines how such individuals respond to state schooling aimed at minority citizen-making by interpreting their ethnicity and negotiating ethnic boundaries in the Han Chinese-dominant society. Considering citizenship as a process of being made and self-making in relation to state powers, this paper examines the complexities, internal tensions, and dilemmas in citizenship making for these young Tibetans. This paper finds that push and pull factors – their ontological insecurity in inland cities and state-guaranteed secure jobs and ontological security in Tibet respectively – together have contributed to the process of ITC graduates studied learning to be ‘safe citizens’. Although the ITC policy succeeded in cultivating numerous ‘safe citizens’, the state’s failure to establish a ‘safe space’ at large for Tibetans might jeopardize the larger aims of this state project in the long term.

Keywords:

• Inland Tibet class
• safe citizen
• citizenship
• ethnicity
• ontological insecurity

Acknowledgement

The author is grateful to Professor Zhonghua Guo, Dr. Sophia Woodman, Professor Lin Yi and the external reviewers for their very helpful comments and suggestions.

Notes

1. All of the informants’ names are pseudonyms.

2. In this paper, Tibet refers to Tibet Autonomous Region. In Chinese, ‘inland Tibet class’ is called ‘neidi xizang ban’. According to Postiglione and Benjiao (2009), ‘Neidi is usually rendered as ‘inland’, a term that refers to the Chinese mainland territory from the vantage point of special regions such as Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and Tibet’.

3. See also Free Tibet. 2016. ‘About Free Tibet’. Accessed September 30 2016. https://www.freetibet.org/about-us

4. Mai, Duo. 2015. ‘Inland Tibet classes have recruited more than 10,000 students in the past 30 years.’ China Tibet Website, September 18. Accessed September 30 2016. https://www.tibet.cn/education/tibetan_stu/14425602509.shtml

5. The number rarely reflects the exact number of recruits, because a number of students are self-paying (zifeisheng). In 2012, the exact number of recruits in junior and senior secondary schools was 1800 and 3108, respectively.