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Abstract
The rise of transnational and transcity education consumption suggests the increasingly important role of the capability to move in order to access quality schooling. Studies have examined the multidimensional inequalities underlying translocal education consumption. However, the role of mobility itself is not sufficiently understood. Two questions are rarely asked: (1) How is the capability to move acquired and practised to bring about translocal schooling consumption? and (2) How does the disparity in the capability to move restructure the established intergenerational capital transmission mechanism conceptualized by Bourdieu? This paper answers by theorizing a mobility-mediated, education-based intergenerational capital transmission mechanism. This framework is built upon a theoretical engagement among John Urry, Pierre Bourdieu, and Neil Smith. We substantiate this framework by examining a student migration regime in Sichuan, China. Attention is paid to the inclusion/exclusion of hypermobility-based schooling consumption regime. Empirical analysis is performed by the comparison of two social groups: (a) the middle-class households who employ mobility to chase after the footloose prime schooling resources and thus materialize their class reproduction strategy and (b) the immobile remainder who are stuck in a location deprived of quality schooling resources.
Acknowledgement
This research is funded by the National Science Foundation of China (Ref: 42301220) and the Dissertation Fellowship of Peking University-Lincoln Institute Center for Urban Development and Land Policy (Ref: DS-20202001-ZMZ).
Notes
1 In China, college place distribution, college entrance examination, and college enrolment are conducted on a province-level basis. Students within a province compete for the fixed number of college places using the grade of the provincial college entrance examination. As the participation in the provincial college entrance examination is based on hukou registration, and the syllabus and examination content vary among provinces; student migration is usually restricted to the province boundary.
2 The spatial Gini coefficient is widely used to measure spatial concentration/dispersion; the larger the coefficient, the greater that geographical concentration. It was originally developed by Krugman (Citation1991) to measure the geographical concentration of an industry, and then extended to measure other social activities. We use the spatial Gini coefficient to indicate the level of the spatial concentration of the students who can enter a key university and those who can enter a university and in Sichuan. For the former, the formula is written as where G is the spatial Gini coefficient for students enrolled in a key college, Ki is the proportion of the students who can enrol in a college university in city i in the total number of students who can enter a key college in Sichuan and Ii is the proportion of the students who participate in the college entrance examination in city i to the total number of students who participate in the colleague entrance examination in Sichuan. For the latter, the formula is written as
where G is the spatial Gini coefficient for students enrolled in a college, and Ui is the proportion of the students who can enter a college in city i in the total number of students who can enter a university in Sichuan.
3 Student performance is based mainly on students’ grades in the high school/college entrance examination and the high school/college enrolment rates.
4 Interview with a senior manager of a profit-making school in Mianyang in October 2018.
5 In the late 2000s, the private education groups in Chengdu and Mianyang started to open international schools, selling education services to the students who desire to enter a UK, USA, Singaporean and French college including the guidance to pass the standardized tests (e.g., A-level, SAT, TOEFL and IETLS). Chengdu and Mianyang were the only cities in Sichuan having such education service in the 2010s.
6 interview with a senior teacher at a profit-making school in Mianyang in January 2019.
7 Interview with two officials of Mianyang Education Bureau in October 2018 and with an official of Chengdu Education Bureau in January 2019.
8 Interview with two teachers and three non-local parents in Mianyang in October 2018, and with two teachers and two non-local parents in Chengdu in January 2019.
9 Interview with two senior teachers in Nanchong in September 2019 and two senior teachers in Guangyuan in November 2019.
10 In 1994, China established a new tax system determining the distribution of taxation between the central and local governments. That is, the central government takes the majority of the stable tax resources from the local population, and the local governments are encouraged to attract capital investment and enlarge the local tax base to gain sufficient taxes to finance the local public sector. Thus, the tax-sharing reform is taken as the beginning of the transformation of Chinese urban governance from managerialism to entrepreneurialism (Wu Citation2016).
11 Interview with three senior managers of profit-making schools in Mianyang in October 2019.
12 The non-local students who were from a same city usually travelled together between the home city and the school and thus easily became friends. Because of the same accents and familiarities, these fellow-townsmen students act collectively after class both inside and outside the campus. In the 2010s, some of these fellow-townsmen groups have evolved into informal gangs battling against each other.
13 In China, every child must receive primary and junior middle level schooling according to a nine-year compulsory education regime. After that, the admissions to high schools and colleges are very competitive. On the national average, roughly 50% of children can enter a high school, of which 75% can enter a college. About 37% of children can attain a college degree, and the enrolment into a high school is crucial for this educational attainment. Among the remaining 50% who cannot enter a high school, 60% go to vocational schools, and 40% go directly to work (NES 2020). In Guangyuan and Nanchong, these numbers are lower than the national average, and the opportunities are concentrated in one or two top schools. If he/she does not pass into the top local middle schools, a child most probably will not be able go to college.
14 In China, the job market is highly segmented according to educational attainment. For those with a college degree, there are two major forms of finding employment. One is participation in the public sector’s universal recruitment examinations; these positions in the public sector are tenured. The other is to compete for a formal position in enterprises. The two types of jobs constitute the middle and upper job markets. For these without a college degree, self-employment (e.g., running a small business) and informal employment in low-end manufacturing industry and gig economy (e.g., line and delivery workers) are two major ways of employment.
15 Interview with two senior teachers in Guangyuan in October 2019.