Deterritorializing the Chinese "Floating Children" From Sociospatial Normalization Enacted Through Social Scientific Representations

• In Event: 68.061 - Roundtable Session 30
  In Roundtable Session: 68.061-11 - Innovation, Agency, and Normalization: Curriculum Studies in the 21st Century

Abstract

To deterritorialize the Chinese “floating children” from arborescent and sedentarist representations in social science scholarship in China, this paper first examines how demographic, psychological and sociological research are weaved together to render an intelligibility to the “floating children” as a distinct type of people. Then, it points out how particular spatial and social norms that differentiate and divide people, places and cultures as fixed and stabilized unities are reiterated and naturalized through analytical notions, such as "rural-urban dichotomy", "individual adaptability", "social integration", "socioeconomic status", and "suzhi". The third part historicizes how each of those notions are historically produced, enacted, and retrofitted. To conclude, I emphasize the act of exclusion and abjection produced in the effort of creating social equality.

Author

• Lei Zheng, University of Wisconsin - Madison