Between Aspirations and Realities: Migrant Children in China’s Cities

• In Event: Mobilities and Aspirations of Marginal Groups in Emerging Chinese and Indian Cities

Abstract

Children are found to be increasingly involved in China’s massive waves of rural-to-urban migration in post-reform era. How are their future aspirations influenced by the exposure to urban life and possibilities? And how do they negotiate their daily realities with their aspirations, in particular against the institution of hukou that restricts their entitlement to social services in the cities? I propose a mixed-method approach to unravel the complexities of this phenomenon. By analyzing a national representative sample of China Family Panel Studies (the 2012 wave), I demonstrate that migrant adolescents (aged between 10-15), in comparison their left-behind counterparts in rural communities, reported significantly higher educational aspirations, which relationship is mediated by a higher level of parental human capital acquisition, parental monitoring and family educational expenditure. Through fieldwork interview and observational data in Shenzhen, the first opening-up city in mainland China after reform, I examine the day-to-day living experiences and narratives of 15 migrant adolescents and their parents in their home environment and the migrant school they attend. Considerable gaps between the adolescents’ narratives and their life experiences reveal a series of conundrums they are confronted with: physical proximity with emotional detachment from parents, interrupted and resumed friendship networks in the process of migration, and a simultaneous self-projection as a Shenzhener and an outsider. These dilemmas are to be understood in the interactions between national development policies, local labor market conditions and strategies of “doing family” for labor migrants to cope with institutional constraints and economic opportunities.

Author

• Xiaorong Gu, National University of Singapore