Community-based education and child development work for migrant children in China: a multi-dimensional citizenship approach

Abstract

The primary focus of this article is to investigate the impact of community-based efforts to provide education and child development programs and service in China’s migrant communities, specifically as it pertains to the prospects of addressing sociocultural and socioeconomic inequalities in education and child development in urban China. Building on frameworks of dimensions of citizenship, this article examines the work of migrant educator-activists who provide community-based education and child development service in Beijing’s migrant communities. Their efforts to address inequalities in child development for migrant children enrich the understanding of citizenship in the Chinese context.

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Notes on contributors

Min Yu

Min Yu, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Comparative and International Education & Social Studies Education in the College of Education at Wayne State University. Her lines of inquiry draw on scholarship from migration studies, education, and sociology to examine the roles of community organizing and the impact of changing social, political, and economic conditions on the education of children. Specifically, her research explores the relationships between home, school, and community with attention to students’ and teachers’ experiences that are positioned in relation to different forms of power and ways of knowing. Her work advocates for the recognition of the collective efforts of parents and teachers in marginalized communities and the representation of communities’ languages, cultures, and knowledge in school curriculum as necessary, relevant, and impactful pedagogy. She has published a sole-authored book that received a major award from the American Educational Research Association (AERA), and articles in top-tiered interdisciplinary journals, such as The China Quarterly, Comparative Education, Comparative Education Review, Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education, Educational Studies, Gender, Work & Organization, Review of Research in Education, Sociological Inquiry.