The Politics of Education Policy in China: The Case of Educating Migrant Children

• In Event: Hilton Roundtable Session 20
  In Roundtable Session: Immigrant and Migrant Student Experiences and Academic Achievement

Abstract

With the intention of building upon ongoing discussions surrounding both the conception and purposes of “policy-sociology” (Ball 1993, 1998, 2015), this article draws from archival data and detailed ethnographic data to emphasize two important aspects that previous studies of China’s education policies have tended to underplay given their focus on social-economic perspectives. The first argument is that education policies have an underlying agenda that extends beyond that of simply addressing the educational needs of certain groups—as such, this article seeks to highlight the discursive functions of policy texts. The second argument is related and seeks to raise the question: for whom are these policies intended and who is best served by them?

Authors

• Min Yu, Wayne State University

• Christopher B. Crowley, Wayne State University